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THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


THE RAT TRAP 
THE STORY OF EDEN 
CAPTAIN AMYAS 
AS YE HAVE SOWN 
MAFOOTA 

ROSE-WHITE YOUTH 

THE PATHWAY OF THE PIONEER 

TROPICAL TALES 

THE RIDING MASTER 

POEMS 


THE UNOFFICIAL 
HONEYMOON 


BY 

DOLF WYLLARDE 

1 1 

AUTHOR OF “THE RIDING MASTER, ' “THE RAT TRAP, ETC. 


NEW YORK 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 

MCMXI 


Copyright, 1911, by 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 


4 







o’ 


FROM 

SEAa.’NQ ROOM 

m 1 m 


AN APOLOGY 


T DEDICATE this tale of pure imagination to those 
** people who are so tired of conventional existence 
that they welcome an escape though only for a few 
hours, and through the pages of a book. It has no 
parallel in real life, and is, I believe, utterly impossible 
in all its details. Nevertheless it is an interesting 
problem to consider how men and women would act if 
entirely deprived of that wholesome fear of the police- 
man round the corner in which we all live. It is mani- 
festly unfair to judge character even in a book by such 
a standard, because the Reader is moderately sure that 
the end of the story will be rescue, or at least the re- 
appearance of law and order in lives swept bare of 
them for a space. But consider what a topsy-turvy 
outlook it would be to the characters, who did not 
know, who were gradually convinced that there was 
no rescue to be hoped, and for whom there was no 
such thing as Public Opinion. The rules of the game 
are all changed ; for such as them the old standards are 
helplessly inapplicable, and the moral code is reduced 
to the simplicity of dealing fairly with each other as 
regards the bare necessities of existence — food, shel- 
ter, and warmth. The consequences are quite impos- 
sible to generalize, depending as they must do upon 
temperament. What in some cases would be suicide, 
or religious mania, in others might be passion, or a 


AN APOLOGY 


return to the merely animal. I ask the Reader’s in- 
dulgence, for that portion of the book which is placed 
upon the Island at any rate. 

DOLF WYLLARDE 

Weymouth, 19 ii 


THE 

UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


CHAPTER I 

“The great things of the -World come suddenly. 

With God behind them ” . . . . 

TT had been a beautiful sunset. Bars of red and 
orange, fading to pale gold, had stained the pure 
blue of the sky and turned the clouds into fairy 
palaces, save for a curious edging of brown that tended 
to spoil their beauty. As the sun sank, too, the colours 
he flung across the North Pacific Ocean were almost 
prismatic, and beyond any ordinary display even in 
latitudes so near the equator. Every one on board 
the Aristo had agreed that it was the most unusual 
sunset they had ever seen, though their experiences 
varied from Africa to the Carribean, and down to 
Cape Horn. 

After the sun had gone a deep silence seemed to 
settle down on the sea despite the long swell that every 
now and then swept from one horizon to another — 
a heaving of the whole glassy surface like the throb 
of an unquiet heart. People gathered in knots about 
the deck, and said how heavy the atmosphere felt, and 
they were sure there would be a storm because the 
i * 


2 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


animals were so uneasy ; and through all the desultory 
converse, and the steady throb of the Aristo’s en- 
gines as she trod the water-floors, came the incessant 
lowing of the ship’s cows, and the intermittent baying 
of a big hound that some man from the Warrego was 
taking home to Vancouver. 

After dinner the heat seemed to increase with the 
darkness which came down thick, like a pall; and, as 
by common consent, the passengers streamed up on to 
the decks, the steerage disporting itself for'ard under 
the lifted bows of the ship, while the first-class took 
possession of the deck-chairs and fixed seats amid- 
ships, and the second-class spread itself out on the 
poop. The decks were all alive with humanity, which 
gasped and lolled in the tainted air and asked aimless 
questions of itself as to what this unnatural atmos- 
pheric disturbance portended. Nobody was really 
alarmed, however, so long as the officers went about 
their duties with the same serene faces, and the routine 
of the ship did not flag. It gave people something to 
talk of, and enlivened the monotony of card-parties 
and scandal which had begun to pall during the two 
weeks out from Sydney. 

Everybody seemed to be gathered into groups of 
two or three except one solitary girl who was leaning 
over the railing on the starboard side and had not al- 
tered her attitude since she came up from the saloon 
and turned her shoulder to the company in general, 
staring out into the uncanny darkness in a morose 
fashion peculiar to her. Nobody noticed her very 
much, or attempted to join her, those who had spoken 
to her so far finding her extremely repellent in man- 
ner, and unattractive in appearance. She was rather 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 3 

tall and thin, but carried herself badly, so that her 
round back detracted from her height. Her hair was 
dark, and cut short to her head — not cropped like a 
boy’s, but rather after a fashion that might be termed 
“ a mop,” for it was very thick and would not lie 
smooth. Moreover, she was sallow and unhealthy in 
appearance, and her brown eyes were full of the dis- 
content that spoiled the expression of her lips. She 
was the sister of the young Scotch missionary who 
spent so much time in the fo’c’sle, though he travelled 
first-class, and who had been pronounced charming in 
manner by anyone to whom he had spoken in his rare 
appearances upon deck; but there was certainly little 
likeness between Donald and Leslie Mackelt, either 
physically or mentally, and those who would have wel- 
comed him amongst them were glad to leave the girl 
alone. Donald was tall and fair and blue-eyed, with 
a typical Scotch face, high-cheekboned and fresh 
skinned; he spoke with a soft Scotch accent too, 
whereas his sister was purely English in voice and 
pronunciation. 

“ I hate this voyage ! ” Leslie Mackelt was saying 
to herself, as she pressed her eager heart against the 
hard railing with a perverse pleasure in bruising her 
woman’s breast. “ And I hate all these people ! 
They are vulgar and stupid and narrow — they can 
talk of nothing but stock and the value of land, just 
as they did in Queensland. All Australians are uned- 
ucated — they have never even read anything.” She 
did not realize that the narrowness was in herself, and 
that she lacked the touchstone in her nature which 
should bring out the best in those around her. The 
stockmen and bushmen would have been friendly and 


4 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


kind to the delicate girl who travelled with her en- 
thusiastic brother on his rough road to what he consid- 
ered a high calling ; but Leslie had regarded them with 
open contempt because their wide knowledge did not 
include the little curriculum of her school life. She 
thought she was educated, whereas she was only 
taught, and that within a narrower boundary than a 
sheep-pen. 

“ I suppose the Mauritius people think they are 
better class,” she went on, with a secret envy she tried 
to sneer down. “ But they are only vulgar, really. 
Mrs. Gellert — the 4 May Queen ! ’ — and her attendant 
swains, Mr. Dobell and Major Trelawny! Just be- 
cause they happen to belong to the Army and to have 
been stationed in that little island ! They spend a lot 
of money on dress and think it’s smart, but they are 
so silly and brainless I wouldn’t care to talk to them. 
I wonder if there is another person on board besides 
myself who can appreciate Keats’ 4 Ode to the Nightin- 
gale ’ ! All their sense goes in choosing clothes — and 
then, besides being silly, that’s wrong.” 

Leslie sighed in her heart while the last word found 
its usual expression on her lips. She had been most 
carefully trained to regard vanity and extravagance 
as actual sin, and though her environment had been 
that of the English Methodist rather than the Scotch 
Free Church, her outlook and her brother’s only dif- 
fered in one essential point. Donald thought with 
real fervour that such existences as Mrs. Gellert’s and 
Major Trelawny ’s were frivolous and worldly, there- 
fore to be deeply pitied and prayed for. If he could 
he would have preached his own gospel to them, re- 
claimed, and rejoiced over them as wandering sheep. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


5 

Leslie thought that they were frivolous and worldly 
too, and condemned them savagely because her soul 
cried out for the prettiness, the far-off glamour of 
their unknown lives, that she saw with unaccustomed 
eyes. She had experienced so little that Mrs. Gel- 
lert’s tired beauty was a dazzling and a wicked thing 
to her; and she knew, and writhed to know, that she 
would have given all her petted intellectualism to be 
on the same terms of easy intimacy with Major Tre- 
lawny as were the Mauritius set. 

It is quite probable that Mrs. Gellert would have 
been ready to be converted by Donald Mackelt, whom 
she knew as the “ handsome missionary,” but as it 
chanced they had never come in each other’s way. 
Donald was always in the steerage, holding service 
for those who would attend, preaching, praying, doing 
his work as he saw it with the zeal of the fanatic. 
Mrs. Gellert, as a garrison belle, still held her small 
Court on the homeward-bound vessel, and rarely took 
any notice of the other passengers save to ridicule 
them to her own set. This was a small clique of 
Army people who had agreed to return to England on 
a holiday via Vancouver, partly for the sake of a 
few days in Sydney before they caught the connecting 
boat. Mrs. Gellert had never set foot in Australia, 
and this would be her last chance, for her husband was 
following her to England with his regiment in three 
months’ time. Leslie was right in her contemptuous 
designation of this lady as the “ May Queen,” for Mrs. 
Gellert’s name being May the title had been bestowed 
on her years ago when Colonel Gellert brought her out 
with him on foreign service, and the girl had over- 
heard the other women of the party using it. While 


6 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


she stood in her discontent at the railing on the star- 
board side, Mrs. Gellert was surrounded by her usual 
retinue — Major Trelawny, Mr. Dobell of her hus- 
band’s regiment, Mrs. Donaldson of the Gunners, and 
one or two more men who hovered on the outskirts of 
the charmed circle, half admitted and half on suffer- 
ance. May Gellert was a pretty woman still, though 
she was five-and-thirty ; as she rested in her deck-chair 
with her high-heeled shoes stretched out beyond the 
fluffy frills of her dinner-gown, she might well claim 
the position of idle beauty. 

“ It’s too hot for words! ” Mrs. Donaldson had just 
said for the fifth time, lighting the cigarette that Do- 
bell had offered her. “ I feel pretty old that I ever 
consented to come home by this route! I never knew 
the equator so obtrusive before, and I’ve been over it 
about ten times.” 

“ It’s not the heat so much as this dead air that 
gives me the pip,” said Dobell cheerfully, twitching his 
shoulders as if he were really suffering from prickly 
heat. “ There’s some disturbance goin’ on in the 
nether regions, or my name’s not Joseph! ” 

“ I thought it was Sandy ! ” said Mrs. Gellert with 
a yawn. “ My husband says the Mess was more than 
godparents to you.” 

“Too bad, Mrs. Gellert!” — but the boy laughed 
at his Colonel’s wife, passing his hand over his red 
hair. “I tried to make ‘not for Joe!’ my typical 
song when I joined, but the thing wouldn’t come off.” 

There was a languid silence. The air was certainly 
flat and stale as in a city, rather than clean with the 
purity of mid-ocean, and a faint sense rather than a 
smell of sulphur made Mr. Dobell’s reference to the 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


7 


nether regions singularly apt. Through the stagnant 
night the cows lowed restlessly, and the great hound 
bayed his protest. 

“ It is hot ! ” said Mrs. Donaldson for the sixth time. 

“ Do you think so? D’you know I was just be- 
ginning to feel a little chilly. Major Trelawny, I 
wish you would go and find me a wrap,” said Mrs. 
Gellert carelessly to the tall man who was leaning 
against the deck-house beside her. 

Mrs. Donaldson raised her brows in the darkness. 
Dobell stared blankly into the blank night. The heat 
was so undeniable that the request was a rather obvi- 
ous display of power. But Major Trelawny was the 
prime feather in Mrs. Gellert’s cap, and she enjoyed 
her command of his services for the voyage at least. 
Beyond that he would pass out of her sphere, and if 
she were destined to feel a pang of personal regret it 
was hardly that at present — he was merely the “ older 
man,” with more experience and position than the 
boys she usually dragged at her chariot wheels, and 
his homage was not self-interested as theirs might be, 
for he had been Private Secretary and A.D.C. to the 
Governor, and was not of the regiments stationed at 
Port Louis or Vacaos Camp. As he stood up deliber- 
ately to do her bidding, a little sleepy pleasure passed 
across her half-veiled eyes, as across the eyes of a 
purring cat. 

“ Where shall I find it, Mrs. Gellert? ” he said, in a 
pleasant, assured voice that somehow carried his per- 
sonality with it. If he allowed himself to play squire 
of dames for the time being, it was surely only by his 
own consent; and when he chose also he would play 
it no longer. 


8 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


“ Oh, ask the stewardess ! ” she said vaguely, and 
watched him still as he turned and walked off up the 
deck, a good-looking man, well-built and well-dressed, 
with a very fair idea of his own advantages no doubt. 

Major Trelawny walked up the starboard side of the 
deck, and stepped into the deck-house without seeing 
the solitary figure of the girl still leaning on the rail- 
ing. He was not even aware of Leslie Mackelt’s ex- 
istence, or of her presence on the boat, though he had 
heard his own set comment on the “ handsome mis- 
sionary ” who was her brother. But Leslie was well 
aware of him, and hated him in her envy. Why 
should he look and walk as if the earth belonged to 
him, when he was so empty-headed (Leslie had never 
heard him speak) and a dissipated roue? (All sol- 
diers led useless, immoral private lives in her Meth- 
odist relations’ creed.) She felt that the only com- 
fortable attitude of mind with regard to him was one 
of lofty contempt, even though it stung her to know 
him quite unconscious of it. 

“ There he goes ! on some errand for the May 
Queen, I suppose,” she said to herself with bitter lips. 
“ Her lace handkerchief — or her feather boa ! ” She 
thought of the general fluffiness which was always to 
be associated with Mrs. Gellert’s personal appearance, 
and she felt she detested her own dress — a plain white 
linen blouse and a short dark skirt. There were no 
frills about Leslie — frills were frivolous, a woman’s 
natural daintiness was almost sinful. It had been her 
brother’s advice to her to discard underskirts on board 
and to wear black “ cycling ” knickerbockers, on ac- 
count of the steep companion ladders she must ascend. 
Knickerbockers were decent and useful; who knew 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


9 


what the frill of a petticoat might not suggest to rov- 
ing eyes! It was very sensible and hideous, but Les- 
lie felt she loathed her enforced modesty in compari- 
son to Mrs. Gellert’s alluring laces. 

Quite unconscious of her criticism, Major Trelawny 
disappeared into the deck-house, and so down to the 
saloon deck. He sent a steward for the stewardess, 
and the stewardess for a wrap, while he went into his 
own cabin for his field-glasses. He wanted to look at 
the horizon, and judge for himself the chance of a 
storm, for he had seen all sorts of weather round 
about the world, and the present conditions puzzled 
him. The wrap came promptly, for Mrs. Gellert was 
an important lady on her own deck, and proved to be a 
long, soft cloak of dull silk, in colour like the inside of 
a conch shell. The soldier threw the feminine, faintly 
scented thing over his arm, and returned by the main 
companion to the upper-deck. But as he stepped out 
of the deck-house on to the starboard side again, he 
stopped and looked to the horizon with startled eyes. 

It was some hours before moonrise, and indeed that 
phosphorescent glow in the east could never be the 
moon; but the unearthly light made all that side of 
the world a ghastly place, and against it the railing of 
the ship stood out black, with the silhouette of a girl’s 
figure facing the phenomena and as still as if par- 
alysed. She had her back to him, and as if by in- 
stinct he found himself at her side, alone with her, they 
two of all on the ship looking at that extraordinary 
illumination. 

Even in the moment that he joined her, before the 
rest of the passengers could take alarm, it seemed as 
if something rose out of the distant sea and came 


IO THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

sweeping down upon them. First it was a small black 
cloud against the livid light — then a huge wall rising 
up into the sky, so swiftly was it hurled across the 
world — and then before a shriek could burst from 
agonized lips it had swept onward with the same ter- 
rific force, carrying something with it in the hollow of 
its bosom. But for the minute that it had hung above 
human eyes it had looked like a great curled wave, a 
wall of water that would never break, but that some 
elemental force too awful to contemplate was driving 
through space. . . . 


/ 


i 


CHAPTER II 


“All alone, thou and I, in the desert — 

In the land all forgotten of God, — 

In the land the last raised from the ocean, 
The land where no footsteps have trod. 

In the land where the lost pioneer 
Lies stricken in heart as in head, 

In the land where his bones lie, sand-buried, 


The land of the dead." — H enry Kingsley. 



‘HE man raised himself, and stared about him 


JL with haggard eyes. He was conscious of but 
two elementary emotions — pain and the desire for 
food and drink; and had it not been for the torture 
of his burning throat, the cry of life to be nourished, 
he would have yielded to the aching body that only 
wanted rest and to be left where it was. Driven by 
his thirst and hunger — for hunger was the secondary 
craving — he made a wild effort and forced himself 
almost to his knees, but only to fall back and lie as 
before, face downwards, his arms outstretched as he 
had thrown them in some remote instant, to save him- 


self. 


He lay still for' a time as if exhausted, wondering 
dimly if that struggle had been his last. Then the 
instinct for life reasserted itself, and he tried again, 
with the same result. His body was a mass of bruises, 
and it seemed as if existence had been only just not 
beaten out of him. Yet with every fresh effort the 
life stirred more in his languid veins, and fear and 


ii 


12 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

rage made him struggle against his own weakness. 
It appeared to him as if he tried again and again be- 
fore he found himself on his feet, staggering a few 
steps without aim or object, clutching at things to 
save himself, and then swaying as he stood erect, his 
hands grasping the huge crown of a fallen cocoanut 
palm that lay along the sand before him. 

After a minute he saw that the cocoanut had been 
his bed and saviour, for how long he could not tell. 
But whatever force had flung him face downwards 
into its crown of palm leaves, had broken his fall by 
the uprooted tree and left them stranded there to- 
gether, on the sand. It was the resistance of the wiry 
crown that had saved his body from being broken like 
eggshell, and had interposed between him and the flat- 
tened earth. He still clung to the widespread palms, 
like a child to its mother’s hands, as he looked about 
him. 

The sand sloped up gently, until it reached a fringe 
of vegetation, and became lost in the green. On either 
side of the fallen cocoanut and the lonely man low 
cliffs, half covered in the same green growth, ran back 
along the coastline, out of sight; and he noted, half 
unconsciously, that there were hollows and dark holes 
in their white surface, that might mean caves and 
shelter. Immediately in front of him — for he stood 
with his back to the sea, the noise of which he shud- 
dered to hear behind him — the land dipped to a small 
ravine, and it seemed as if some devastating army had 
lately passed up the gorge from the torn and shat- 
tered aspect of its wild green growth. Not only the 
cocoanut palm lay uprooted on the sand, but the vines 
and creepers that trailed over the bush-growth had 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


!3 


been torn and rent aside, broken boughs hung forlornly 
from the larger trees or were abruptly torn off, and 
here and there in the dense greenery it looked as if 
Something had actually ripped a way and showed the 
dark veining of rock and earth beneath — yawning 
seams, from which the kindly drapery of leaves was 
torn back. 

But the man’s dizzy brain was too bewildered to 
assign any cause for the extraordinary devastation of 
the valley, the which he only noticed vaguely. What 
caught his eye with instinctive hope was the bright 
twinkle of water, trickling out of the green fringe to 
the land, and actually slipping away through the sand 
to lose itself in the sea. Owing to the course of the 
stream bearing to his right it had probably escaped 
the force of that Something that had taken a direct 
path and swept the middle of the valley; but it was. 
not from reasoning on these or any lines that he limped 
away in its direction, and crawling up through dense 
masses of creeper and bush found that it narrowed 
and deepened inland, and ran with unexpected depth 
and strength, before spreading and wasting on the 
shallow shore. Though so deeply overhung with veg- 
etation, it had worn its way with the fury of a small 
river, and here and there reflected the light of day in 
its shallows between the drooping branches. 

The man threw himself down on the bank, and 
hollowing his hands filled them from the running 
stream, trembling with expectation. But his momen- 
tary fear was groundless, for the water was fresh. 
He drank again and again, bathing his face in the 
cool water, but fortunately for himself he had no ves- 
sel but his hands, and could not surfeit his greed of 


H THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

the liquid, or his thirst might have defeated itself. 
For a long time, as he thought, he lay there, dabbling 
in the water; but he had lost count of time, and it 
might have been hours or minutes. The sudden flash 
of a silvery fin in the shallow of the stream roused 
him to his other necessity, and he looked round him 
for food. If only he could have grasped the fish! 
But he regarded that as unattainable, and raising him- 
self once more went back to the beach to search if 
there might be sea-birds' eggs. 

For the first time he faced the sea, and again that 
shudder shook his whole frame. The tide was evi- 
dently just on the turn, for the glistening white sand 
where he stood was divided from the water by a band 
of wet brown, whence the waves had retreated, and. 
great heaps of seaweed cast up by the breakers. It 
was evidently a dangerous coast and a death-trap of 
reefs, for fifty yards from shore the smooth sea was 
broken into wreaths of foam, and again further off 
some peril that lay unseen beneath the dancing blue 
caught and churned it again as the tide ran out. The 
man stood and stared at it for a moment as if fas- 
cinated. There was nothing but the satin smooth 
sea for miles out to the round horizon, and nothing to 
break its monotony save the white wings of sea-birds 
dipping and calling sad cries that mocked the watcher. 
He turned abruptly to the shore again with a gesture 
of despair that was like frenzy, the first realization of 
his utter impotence, and only the craving of hunger 
seemed to divert him from flinging himself down again 
on his face and giving way to the horror of his loneli- 
ness. 

The sea-birds built their nests higher up the beach 


the UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 15 

than the place where he was standing, as he presently 
discovered, to be out of the way of the tides. Some 
indeed chose the low caves and shelves of rock that he 
had mechanically noticed, for he found dried guano 
and other traces of them there. But it was not the 
nesting season, and he was disappointed of their eggs 
in his first search. 

His careful survey, however, discovered something 
else, and filled him with a dull surprise that he had 
not noticed it before. Just outside the largest of the 
caves lay a long dark object that at a distance he had 
thought was a log of wood washed up by the tide, 
but as he approached it he saw it to be the body of a 
boy, lying face downwards as he himself had done, 
and apparently dead. He moved towards it in- 
stinctively, then hesitated, and finally continued his 
hunt for the eggs ; for if it were dead it did not mat- 
ter, nor was its necessity as great as his own, which 
threatened to overpower him. He was faint and dizzy 
still, and when he realized that it was hopeless to look 
to the sea-birds to sustain his life his eyes filled with 
weak tears, and he dragged himself slowly back to his 
first friend the cocoanut, remembering the ripe nuts 
among its fallen crown of leaves. He had no obvi- 
ous means of opening the nuts, and indeed he never 
knew exactly how he cut through the tough rind — 
he remembered vaguely a sharp rock on which he 
stabbed and pierced it, and then tearing with hands 
and teeth like a wild beast. But the earth yielded her 
fruit to the need of man, as from the creation of the 
world, and he fed greedily upon the sustaining white 
flesh of the nut, and drank the healing cocoanut water, 
while his strength revived. 


16 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

The sun was going down across the water, and the 
man’s first collected thought was that he was looking 
towards the west. The applied knowledge lifted him 
from the sphere of the mere animal, seeking for food, 
to that of reasoning humanity, and he remembered the 
body of the boy lying at the mouth of the cave, and 
went to look at it again. With languid hands he 
turned it on its back, noticing that it had fallen on a 
still softer couch than his own had been, for the cave 
was half full of dried seaweed flung up by some old 
storm, and the boy had seemingly been tossed into the 
entrance. The face was bruised and livid, and a long 
bleeding cut ran across the temple from the thick dark 
hair to the eyebrow, but as the man mechanically put 
his hand over the heart he thought it beat faintly. 
So this other broken fragment of humanity might not 
be quite dead, either! But his first thought was not 
relief at the chance of a companion in his desolation, 
but annoyance at the necessity for finding and giving 
nourishment if the body were to be brought back to 
life. It showed not the least sign of vitality save those 
faint heart-beats that might even now have stopped, 
and he could see no breath issuing from its parted lips. 
He fetched water from the stream, however, with lag- 
ging weariness, sighing as he laboured, and let it fall 
from his hands on the bruised face, for he had no 
other way of bathing it. After a time he contrived 
to break another cocoanut, and tried to pour the milky 
water into the boy’s mouth, but it ran down the un- 
responsive lips until he regretted wasting it and ate 
the nut himself. Now that he was SQmewhat satisfied 
of his hunger the man was conscious of a more healthy 
tire, and longed intensely to stretch himself and sleep. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


17 

It seemed hopeless to try to revive the dying boy, and 
he decided indifferently to leave him, and when the 
breath at last left the body to fling it into the sea. He 
dragged it into the cave, however, before he lay down 
himself, and having bestowed it in shelter he flung 
himself down also on the seaweed and fell deeply 
asleep. 

When the man awoke it was sunrise, for the first 
golden rays had shot over the wooded slopes of the 
Island, which rose gradually to some unknown inland 
height, and were dancing across the smooth sea tinging 
the treacherous wreaths of foam above the reefs with 
red. A sense of exultation was on him as he stretched 
himself and opened his eyes, to be followed immedi- 
ately by as swift a depression as he began to remem- 
ber where he was. The pure fresh morning air, how- 
ever, had roused him as much as the daylight, and he 
was very hungry. He stood up, feeling stiff and 
numbed, but no longer the dazed, battered creature of 
yesterday, and his brain began to work in more ac- 
customed grooves, though his necessities were still ele- 
mentary. He must have food and drink, and give his 
body a chance to recover its normal power and health ; 
but because he was a man and no longer an animal he 
remembered his neglect of his fellow-sufferer the night 
before, and a little feeling of shame made him hurry 
towards the body, which still lay as he had placed it. 
Hardly waiting to ascertain if it were still breathing, 
he made his way towards the stream to bring such suc- 
cour as his bare hands could hold, and then he noticed 
something he had missed before — a wild lemon grow- 
ing close to the shore, and bearing ripe fruit. He 
2 


1 8 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

broke it eagerly and was returning to the cave when 
for the first time it occurred to him to think how he 
was dressed. There were no shoes on his feet he 
knew, for even the little climbing and walking of yes- 
terday had hurt them, and indeed had begun to wear 
away the silk socks he still wore; his body was cov- 
ered with a fine linen shirt, and a pair of dark cloth 
trousers, curiously discoloured and torn to the knees. 
He had no coat, but one sleeve and a fragment of the 
collar still hung, sodden, from his right shoulder, and 
wound round the only button there was a curious 
streamer of pink silk, the colour of the inside of a 
conch shell. He wondered vaguely how it had got 
there, and how he had been dressed, for the only thing 
about him that had escaped damage, and indeed pro- 
tected his shirt, was the low-cut evening waistcoat still 
buttoned about his body. The close-fitting thing had 
offered no resistance to the force that had flung him 
down with the cocoanut palm, and so had not been in- 
jured save for the same salt damp that seemed to have 
drenched him through and through. He put his hand 
up to his neck and found neither collar nor tie; but 
when he felt in the pockets of the waistcoat he uttered 
a low cry of joy — the first actual sound he had made. 
In one of them was a small pocket-knife, a little rusted 
with the same salt damp, but uninjured, and in mov- 
ing his arm he realized what had kept even a fragment 
of his coat upon him. It was the strap of his field- 
glasses, and the glasses themselves were still in the 
case, though the latter was battered out of shape and 
the leather almost cut through. He managed to ex- 
tract the glasses, and looked at them. They were 
quite hopeless for sight, but one of the lenses had es- 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


T9 

caped being broken, and would act as a burning-glass 
could he unscrew it. No other possessions could have 
been so precious to the man at that moment. He set 
off at a run for the cave, and having cut one of the 
wild lemons with his knife, proceeded to squeeze the 
juice between the boy’s set, parted lips; but though he 
thought he swallowed he could not be sure, and for- 
getting his own hunger he sat and watched the lifeless 
body in growing fear and disappointment. 

After a while it occurred to him to strip off the wet 
clothes and chafe the boy’s limbs in the hope of re- 
covering animation. These clothes consisted in a torn 
white shirt and dark knickerbockers, with coarse 
stockings but no shoes ; but when the man unbuttoned 
the linen to rub his faintly beating heart he was amazed 
to see that the slight, swelling breasts were those of a 
woman. It hardly reached his comprehension, so en- 
tirely was he satisfied that his companion in misfor- 
tune was a boy, and he stared as if troubled at the 
slender limbs and cropped hair; then, indifferent again, 
proceeded with his ministrations as if the thing before 
him had neither sex nor humanity. After a time it 
seemed to him that the beating of the heart quickened, 
and covering the naked body in the harsh warm sea- 
weed he went off to find his own breakfast, spreading 
the boy’s wet clothes ( for he still thought of her as a 
boy in his dulled condition) on the rocks, to dry in the 
bright sunshine. 

He stripped off the wet fibre and cut a hole in the 
cocoanuts with his knife this time, losing none of the 
milky water, and eating the nut afterwards. Then it 
occurred to him to dry such clothes as he had himself, 
with his companion’s, and having spread them care- 


20 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

fully above the sea-line on the beach he walked down 
to the rocky pools and waded in knee-deep, looking 
again for food. The fish were singularly bold, and he 
thought might be easily caught with simple tackle 
could he contrive it. It was the taking of the first 
that taxed his ingenuity, and it seemed to him hours 
before his patience was rewarded, and he literally 
pulled a fish out of one of the pools where it had be- 
come a prisoner until the tide should turn, and waded 
back to the beach with it flapping and struggling. It 
was not a variety that he knew well, but his sojourns 
in southern hemispheres made it not entirely unknown 
— a strange-looking thing it seemed, when it lay dead 
in the bright sunshine, its fins still gleaming a bright 
green, its head sunk in its globular body, and its tail 
nearly the same. It was, in fact, an old seacock that 
had been prowling about the pool in search of the lit- 
tle crabs and insects on which it lived, and certainly 
never dreamt of so strange an apparition as the naked 
fisherman who had no weapons but his hands. 

The man carried his prize as carefully as if it had 
been a holy thing, and laid it on a little shelf of rock 
inside the cave. The walls of the cave were full of 
smaller holes that served him for cupboards, as well 
as the sea-birds for nests, and finding that his waist- 
coat had dried he carefully folded and laid away that 
one whole garment, in case of some necessity he could 
not foresee, and dressed himself in the silk vest, shirt, 
and trousers, rolling the torn edges up to his knees 
and leaving his legs bare. Then he proceeded to col- 
lect such materials as he thought would burn — trash 
from the palms, dried grass and ferns, some wood that 
was not too green — and unscrewing the lens from his 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


21 


broken glass focussed it to the sun’s rays and waited 
breathlessly for the driest trash to catch. The burn- 
ing-glass acted better and more easily than he had 
hoped, and before long the fire that seemed a miracle 
was crackling merrily outside the cave, and being fed 
by more rubbish. He had no means of boiling water 
from the stream to cook his fish, which would have 
suited him best as he wished to preserve the bones 
carefully, but he fetched clay from the stream and 
tightly packing the fish in that he placed it in the ashes 
of his fire, without attempting to clean it, and baked 
it whole as he had seen chickens done in other lands. 
The smell of the cooked food, when he carefully broke 
the clay away, made his mouth water; he ate raven- 
ously — then, with a pang, set aside a small portion 
of the fish, in case his patient should be able to swal- 
low. But the self-denial was as sharp as a knife, and 
he dared not look at the food he was reserving. 

When he returned towards the cave the sun was 
high overhead, so that he judged it noon. He had left 
the boy, as he still called him in his own mind, in the 
recesses of the cave, and his heart seemed to spring 
into his throat when he saw that he had moved. He 
had crawled to the entrance, as if in search of air, 
and was lying half buried in seaweed, the white flesh 
showing through the dried black weed. The man ran 
forward and dropped on his knees, but the eyes were 
still closed and the body lay inert, on its side. Again 
he chafed it anxiously, and fetched water and fruit, 
the desire that it should live and save him from the 
horror of loneliness being no more an instinct but a 
frenzied prayer. He had the satisfaction at last of 
seeing it swallow, and the eyelids flickered and opened, 


22 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


the eyes beneath staring at him as if he were stranger 
and more terrible than death itself. But in that mo- 
ment of a soul’s awakening he was conscious of some 
extraordinary expression dawning in the whole face 
— recognition, a flicker almost of pleasure — that was 
gone even as he puzzled over it. 

Without words still — how could words be spoken 
to such eyes! — he gathered the body up in his arms 
and found that his strength enabled him to lift it 
easily. He carried it into the cave again, out of the 
heat of the noonday sun, and laid it down carefully 
near the entrance that it might have the warm and 
healing air. Then he covered it with its own dried 
clothes, and sitting down beside it broke fragments 
of the cooked fish and fed it. Its dim eyes never 
stirred from his face; but it began to eat, at first re- 
luctantly, then ravenously as he himself had done. 
He sat there nursing and nourishing as some savage 
mother might her helpless, newborn child, until it fell 
asleep. And then he watched it still, close at its side, 
with the instinct of humanity to cling to humanity — 
they two waifs of all the world, alone in the midst of 
the uninhabited, friendless seas. 

Another night, and another day. The search for 
food, but with more confidence, the making of the fire 
to cook the wild things bereft of existence that man 
might live. In two days it seemed that certain acts 
became a habit. The man roamed rather further 
afield, and returned with his spoils to sustain his own 
strength and that feeble vitality that was still at the 
elementary stage of eating and sleeping. He watched 
and waited for the wavering spark of life to recover 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 23 

itself, and in the meantime his own mind and body 
healed. He had passed from an animal back into a 
man, and so reclaimed his personality. For on the 
evening of the fourth day he found himself standing 
upright on the shore, facing the sunset, though how he 
came there he did not know, and saying out loud, “ I 
am Miles Trelawny of the Carbines — Major Tre- 
lawny — Miles Trelawny! ” as if he feared to lose it 
again. 

And then, suddenly, to the relentless sea and sky 
and the desolate land, “ Oh, God ! — Oh, God ! — Oh, 
God! ” 


CHAPTER III 


“ Somewhere in shuddering, wind-swept space, — 

In shadowland, in no-man’ s-land, — 

Two hurrying forms met face to face 
And bade each other stand. 

“ 1 And who are you ? * asked one agape, 

Shivering in the gloaming light. 

I know not/ said the other shape, 

‘ I only died last night.’ ” — T. B. Aldritch. 

HE girl’s recovery was necessarily slower than 



A the man’s. For some days after his return to 
consciousness, and the regaining of his personality, she 
remained a mere bodily presence, eating and sleeping, 
but as if all her other faculties were stunned. That 
her body was a mass of bruises he knew, and that her 
limbs must ache and stiffen he could see from the 
slowness of her movements and the gradual way in 
which she began to use them. It seemed such a mira- 
cle that life had survived in her at all — even more so 
than in himself — that he felt no surprise, and hardly 
any impatience during the first days through which he 
tended her, asking nothing of her but that she should 
eat and sleep, and look at him with human eyes. It 
was the silence that frightened him, and the loneliness 
that was becoming a nightmare since his senses swung 
him back into desire of touch with the civilized world. 
He longed for her to speak, to develop enough interest 
in their mutual situation to join him in his frantic de- 
sire to escape from it. But for a time she showed no 


24 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


25 

sign of such a thing, and her brain did not appear to 
make any effort to rise above the mere natural needs 
of existence. 

Her first realization of her surroundings, as she told 
him long afterwards, came through a sense of healing 
in the airs that blew on her, both from sea and land. 
They were so soft and balmy, yet so dry and bracing, 
that they cured body and brain alike, and were both 
medicine and nourishment. The cuts on her face and 
head healed with remarkable rapidity, and her first im- 
pulse had been to crawl to the mouth of the cave to 
breathe the wonderful curative properties in the at- 
mosphere. They came to the conclusion, later, that 
the Island on which they found themselves was Ex- 
traordinarily favourable to human life in its climatic 
conditions, and that the rarity of the air was greatly 
stimulating to vitality. The influence of the sun was 
probably responsible for destroying all possible germs 
of disease, the rays being un weakened by damp or 
vapour, of which there seemed singularly little. Even 
the nights were dry and clear at that season of the 
year, and the air was so charged with ozone that it 
was literally as strong as wine. 

After a few days the girl became dully conscious of 
a rough routine that went on round her as certainly as 
the rising and setting of the sun, and the ebb and flow 
of the tide at which she stared with half-seeing eyes. 
The world had never been quite empty for her as for 
the man during that period before he discovered her to 
be alive. In her first coming back to life she had 
opened her eyes on another human entity that had 
served her and nourished her, and it resolved itself 
into as familiar a part of the landscape as the cliff- 


26 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


line jutting out into the blue sea and cutting short the 
round horizon, or the strip of silver-white sand to be 
seen from the entrance to the cave. This familiar 
figure, in ragged shirt and trousers and with unshaven 
face, passed across her vision, bringing food and water 
at first, raising her that she might eat, and bathing 
her face and hands. Sometimes it vanished out of her 
sight, but always to return with food; sometimes she 
watched it making a fire and cooking the food she 
afterwards ate with returning appetite. As she grew 
better she dressed herself mechanically in the clothes 
with which he had covered her, and crept listlessly to 
the stream to drink or to wash herself ; but it did not 
occur to her to try to help in the finding or preparing 
of food until a day when he suddenly spoke, and the 
sound of a human voice shocked her back into a fresh 
consciousness. He had been away for some hours, 
and returned to find her sitting on the seaweed at the 
entrance to the cave, leaning against the flat rock, in 
her invariable attitude when not asleep. She turned 
her heavy eyes from the monotonous blue of the sea 
to the man, because his appearance, as a rule, meant 
the satisfying of her hunger — just so would a wild 
animal in a cage look at its keeper. The man seemed 
weary, but he carried two fish in his hands besides the 
curious tackle with which he caught them, and at 
which she had hardly cared to look as yet. As a rule 
he went straight to the pile of wood and palm trash he 
had collected earlier, and throwing himself face down- 
wards beside it moved something in his hands that 
glittered in the sun until a thin smoke began to rise. 
But this time he came over the sand to the seaweed 
where she was sitting, and spoke: 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


27 

“ Are you well enough to come and help me, 
Tommy? ” he said. 

The shock of the human voice and its unexpected 
question made her shiver. She shook her head queru- 
lously, and half turned her back to him, leaning her 
head against the rough rock. Why should he make 
this demand of her, dragging her back to association 
with material things, and the realization of her sur- 
roundings which she dreaded! She had come re- 
luctantly enough from death back to life. Now this 
demand upon her new vitality roused her to sullen re- 
sistance. 

He stood looking down on her for a moment, help- 
lessly. Then he went back to his pile of unlighted 
wood, and his usual ministrations, while the girl sat 
still, glad to be let alone. But after a time it struck 
her new consciousness that she was hungry, and that 
she was not being fed as usual though the smell of food 
was in her nostrils. She turned round slowly, and 
saw that the man was eagerly devouring his supper as 
she had seen him do often before — but while, or 
after, she had had her share — and her brain made a 
new effort at indignation. He had cooked his food, 
and was eating it out of a rough bowl made of a cala- 
bash gourd, sitting on a ledge of rock from which he 
had stripped the overhanging creepers to make a natu- 
ral seat. To serve his food he had a wooden fork, 
two-pronged, and a spoon clumsily hollowed out. She 
remembered seeing him laboriously fashion them from 
a piece of wood, with a penknife which he handled as 
if it were something very precious. 

The man went on eating voraciously, and took no 
notice of the girl, even when she approached him. She 


28 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


stumbled a little when she reached the rocks where he 
was sitting, and just beyond which he made his fire 
where the hard sand and the vegetation fought for pos- 
session of the earth; but there being no one to help 
her she steadied herself, and reached his side. 

“ Give me some ! ” she said hoarsely, pointing with 
an elementary impulse at the food, and then choked 
and gasped at the sound of her own voice in the still- 
ness. 

He pointed to a portion of the fish which he had set 
aside in another calabash, indicating that she could 
have it. The girl looked at it helplessly, and then at 
the man, emptying his own bowl with hungry haste. 
A new thought formed itself in her stagnant brain — 
the fear that having eaten his own portion he might 
desire hers and repent of having given it to her. She 
snatched the calabash hastily, and sitting down near 
him began to eat with her fingers as he did not offer 
her the spoon and fork he had made for himself. She 
noticed while eating that he had yet another broken 
gourd filled with water, and from this he drank when 
he had finished the fish. In her turn she stretched out 
her hand for it. 

“Water! ” she said eagerly, but he turned it upside 
down to show that it was empty, pouring the last 
bright drops on the rocks. 

“ Go and fill it for yourself ! ” he said, and then, 
meeting her piteous eyes, he added, “ You must do 
your share.” 

She took the calabash meekly enough, though her 
face flushed with resentment. He was forcing her 
back into life and its action, and she wanted to lie 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


29 


down and die — if she could do so without the strug- 
gle between life and death — the more she realized 
the position. But life being stronger than resigna- 
tion to its passing, she filled the gourd at the stream, 
from which she had already drunk on occasions when 
he was absent fishing, and quenched her thirst. Then 
she carried the gourd back to him and laid it down, 
sullenly submissive. 

“ I am going to teach you to light the fire to-mor- 
row, ” he said, assuming a right of command over her 
in their mutual necessity. “ And then I will tell you 
my plans. Can you begin to think again ? ” He was 
able to judge her clouded brain from his own, and to 
treat her with justice and leniency even while he de- 
manded fair play. 

“ Yes ! ” she said, and the eyes that looked up at 
him were the eyes of a creature to its master — for 
the present. 

“ Very well. We will not talk of how we came here 
yet — I can’t focus that, either ” — he shuddered even 
through his stronger frame, and the girl put her hands 
over her eyes with a sharp cry. “ But since we are 
here,” he went on hastily, “ we must have food and 
shelter, until we can — we can plan to — rescue our- 
selves. I will show you how to fish by and by. I 
made a line with the fibre of a creeper and a hook out 
of a fishbone, but the fish here won’t take bait. So 
now I’ve used the fibre for a kind of net, and I’m 
going to fish when it’s dark — they simply crowd after 
a light, and you scoop them up. That’s my net ” — 
he glanced at the strange tackle lying beside him on the 
rock with a pride that bewildered her. She was not 


30 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


yet come to the absorbing interest of ways and means, 
and had hardly followed his explanation. “ Can you 
cook ? ” he asked. 

“ Yes.” 

“We can’t boil the fish yet, unless I can manage 
to bake some clay vessels hard enough. Then we 
could drop a red-hot stone into the water and heat it 
that way. I’ve seen it done by certain tribes. I cook 
mostly among the ashes at present, and use those big 
stones for an oven.” He pointed to some large pieces 
of granite that he had selected as of a general size, 
and which formed the centre of his fire. “ I made a 
great discovery to-day,” he said — it was noticeable 
that he did all the talking, while as yet she could only 
listen. “ I found a bread-fruit tree. There are none 
ripe yet, but in a day or so we shall be able to get some 
and roast it. Have you eaten bread-fruit ? ” 

“ No.” 

“We could live on that alone if necessary. The 
difficulty is to prepare it, as I do not want to wear the 
edge of my knife too much — it is the most precious 
thing we have, except the lens of my field-glasses. 
But I will find you a sharp shell and you can scrape the 
bread fruit, and then we can break it open as I man- 
aged to do the cocoanuts at first. As long as we have 
bread-fruit and cocoanuts and fish we can’t starve, even 
if I find nothing else, which I hope to do further in- 
land.” 

“ Yes.” ' 

“ Then you can gather the dry grass and palm trash 
to feed the fire, and the seaweed to make our beds. I 
have scraped out two bed-places in the sand, inside the 
cave, and if we fill them with dry seaweed we shall be 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


3i 

more comfortable. Do you see that pile of wood up 
there on the cliff? ” 

She followed his pointing finger, and saw a dark 
heap on the highest of the low cliffs running beyond 
her sight into the blue ring of sea. She stared at it 
stupidly, for it presented nothing to her mind but a 
dark object without any meaning. 

“ Do you see it?” he said impatiently. 

She nodded. 

“ You had better try to talk,” he warned her; “ it 
will bring your brain into working order again. I 
talked to the sky and the sea at first, while you were 
lying there unconscious. That was one of the things 
I was afraid of ” — his voice dropped, and he spoke 
softly, with an abject terror she could not yet under- 
stand. “I was afraid of losing my speech — of for- 
getting how ! ” 

The girl, who did not want to speak, or value the 
power as yet, looked at him coldly yet half curiously. 
But for the time being he was her master, and because 
he bade her she made an effort and used her voice. 

“ I do not see the use of — that ! ” she said slowly, 
pointing to the pile on the cliff. “ What is it for? Is 
it — another fire ? ” 

“ It is for a beacon,” he said more briskly, and the 
colour deepened in his burnt face with a new excite- 
ment. “ It is our one chance, at present. Later, I may 
think of something better. It is a pile of dry wood 
that I have been collecting, with a lot of palm trash 
and bamboo leaves. At any time we can set a light 
to it if we see a ship, never mind how far off. It is 
not a very big pile yet, but we can both go on adding 
to it day by day.” 


32 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


She pondered for a minute, and then as one who 
sees her task before her she answered him grudgingly. 

“ You mean that — I am to look for anything that 
will burn — while you are — fishing? ” 

“ Yes — while I am away getting food of any kind. 
You must add to the pile, and watch the seas for a sail, 
and set light to the beacon if I am not here — I shall 
leave you the burning-glass, but you must be as care- 
ful with it as with your own soul ! Perhaps it would 
be almost better to bank the fire we cook by with 
damp moss and keep it smouldering,” he added anx- 
iously. Evidently he doubted her fitness to be trusted 
with the precious lens. “ You can be quite useful to 
me, Tommy, though you can’t do much hard work.” 

For a minute, when he spoke of her care for her 
soul, an increase of expression crossed the girl’s face. 
She drew back her head as if he had struck her, and 
there was faint reproof in her uplifted eyes. But his 
choice of a name for her did not seem to trouble her 
at all, and she answered to it as indifferently as she 
obeyed him for some time to come. Though he knew 
her to be a woman, indeed, he had so accustomed him- 
self to look upon her as a boy that he hardly regarded 
her as anything else, and her boyish appearance kept 
up the impression. In her limp linen shirt or blouse, 
and her dark knickerbockers, she looked totally un- 
feminine to his eyes, and her rough dark hair was 
only long enough to appear untidy. If there was a 
feminine trait about her it lay in the expression look- 
ing out of her melancholy brown eyes ; but their mu- 
tual misfortune made such a sadness a perfectly nat- 
ural thing to his cursory glance. He was not at all 
concerned with the soul of this creature who alone in 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


33 


all the world companioned him, but it was of material 
importance that she should be able to cook their food 
and do the lighter part of the work. They agreed 
that it was better to go barefoot, since in time that 
must become a necessity, neither of them having shoes, 
and when the girl’s tender skin had somewhat hard- 
ened she could clamber about the rocks and tramp 
it through the rough bush as well as the man. She 
learned to fish, but was less successful at procuring 
food than at dressing it, and he usually did the hunting 
and left her to the preparing of their meals. It had 
not occurred to him to toast the fish or the young 
birds he sometimes caught ; but with a rough arrange- 
ment of two sticks thrust into the ground and the 
fibre of a giant creeper stretched across as a line, she 
managed to suspend and turn their supper so that it 
became a more appetizing dish. The bread-fruit they 
baked in the ashes, or among the big stones as an oven, 
and the cocoanuts needed no art to make them appe- 
tizing. If the food was monotonous it was not more 
so than the life, which in a few weeks’ time threatened 
their peace through its maddening sameness, for they 
grew querulous with each other, and intolerant of 
the least weakness or fault — as, for instance, on a 
day when the girl blunted the larger blade of the 
precious knife and nearly snapped it in cutting a co- 
coanut. When she admitted what she had done the 
man was in a sudden fury. 

“ I told you never to use the knife for anything for 
which it could be spared ! ” he cried, standing over 
her with flashing eyes. “ You should have used a 
sharp shell, and broken it with your hands after- 
wards.” 

3 


34 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


“ It’s so hard! ” muttered the girl resentfully. “ I 
was afraid of losing the water ” 

“ There are more cocoanuts to grow and ripen, even 
if you did, you little fool!” he said roughly. “And 
we have only the one knife — that won’t grow again ! 
It’s your idleness, and your desire to spare yourself 
trouble — I can’t trust you with anything.” 

“ You used it to skin a bird the other day ! ” said 
the girl sullenly. “ I don’t see why you should have 
all the easy work — taking the few things we have 
to help yourself! I have had to keep the fire banked 
up and smouldering the last day or so because you 
hid the glass away somewhere and I couldn’t relight 
it!” 

“ It’s because I can’t trust you with anything, un- 
less I’m here to overlook you ! ” repeated the man, 
exasperated, and seizing her by her slight shoulders he 
shook her as a big dog might a kitten. “If you ever 
dare to be careless again I’ll leave you to starve ! ” he 
said furiously, and dropped her in a little heap on the 
hard sand. 

She sat cowering where he had left her for a while, 
and her eyes gleamed in her white face like some wild 
animal’s, maddened to attack. It was true what he 
said, that without him she might starve, for though she 
could catch fish it was only with his net, or the sharp 
wooden spear he had made — though she could cut 
cocoanuts and cook bread-fruit it was only when he had 
climbed trees to obtain them. She would have been 
reduced to eating fruit, and even to find that she 
would have had to penetrate into the bush. But she 
felt hot and sore with her resentment, and looked 
about stealthily to see by what means she could do him 


\ 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 35 

an injury. The great pile of brushwood on the cliffs 
overhead attracted her eyes, his one hope of rescue, 
the beacon he tended and fed so hungrily. She rose 
with caution from her crouching position, and crept 
up the sand and over the boulders to the spot where 
it towered above her, for their mutual efforts had 
raised it from a small pile into a large one, and neither 
rain or windstorm had occurred to scatter it. It was 
composed of large branches of trees such as the man 
could collect or break off with his hands and dry in 
the sun, with smaller twigs to act as matchwood, dried 
fern, and palm trash — anything that would burn, as 
he said. She sheltered herself from sight behind the 
imposing pile, and kneeling down began to pull at the 
lower, heavier wood, meaning to throw it over the 
cliff where it would be carried away by the incoming 
tide. The stack was too compact to yield to her first 
effort, but she tugged savagely, biting her lips, and 
all the while picturing the man’s heat of anger when 
he should discover what she had done. She shivered to 
think of the look on his face and the possible conse- 
quences to herself. She had felt like a pigmy in his 
grasp. And yet she wanted to make him angry, to 
hurt and injure him so that he should be as blind 
with passion as she was herself. She redoubled her 
efforts and felt the foundation of the pile loosen. 

Suddenly she heard his voice behind her. He had 
been seeking her, and had discovered her in the very 
act of her revenge. She dropped her little fierce hands 
into her lap, and knelt before him, a panting creature, 
expectant of his wrath. 

“Were you hiding from me?” he said, and in an 
amazed fashion she, recognized that there was shame 


36 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

in his voice. “ You — you mustn’t be afraid — I for- 
got myself — it’s this cursed loneliness — the life — 
I lose all sense of being a man.” 

He hesitated, confused, and she realized that he 
had not known what she was doing. He merely 
thought that she had fled from him, and taken refuge 
behind the pile of brushwood. 

' “ Look here, Tommy, I’m sorry ! ” he said awk- 

wardly, and his hand fell on the rough dark head in a 
kind of caress — he might have touched his dog so, 
after chastisement. “ I forgot myself! ” he said. 

She looked up, and saw his face transfigured by the 
evening light, but with something in it that had not 
been there a minute since — the same look that had 
come upon it when he refound his personality, only 
that she did not know. She stared with a vague won : 
derment to find more nobility in him than in herself, 
for with a returning recollection of things taught her 
she had somehow thought that she was the better of 
the two — that she must be so, according to the past 
lives that they had lived. 

“ What is your name? ” he said gently. “ We will 
at least try to remember that we are human beings — 
we will not snarl and quarrel like animals.” 

“ I am Leslie Mackelt,” she said curtly, and rose 
from her knees to follow him back to the cave. She 
did not tell him of the wicked purpose that she left 
behind by the beacon pile, but she hung her head and 
was more strangely silent than ever for a day or so. 
The man let her alone to recover confidence in him. 
He reproached himself for his harshness, thinking her 
cowed. But it was, in fact, his generosity that tamed 
her. 


CHAPTER IV 


“As I came through the desert thus it was — 

As I came through the desert; I was twain. 

Two selves distinct that cannot join again; 

One stood apart and knew but could not stir, 

And watched the other stark in swoon, and her; 

And she came on and never turned aside, 

Between each sun and moon and roaring tide : 

And as she came more near 

My soul grew mad with fear/’ — James Thompson. 
HE Island lay in unknown latitudes, for Tre- 



-i- lawny’s very limited knowledge of scientific 
geography did not allow him to place it with any cer- 
tainty. It was probably one of those scattered units 
of the Gilbert or Phoenix groups, he thought, unin- 
habited and probably uncharted because too small 
to make cultivation lucrative. On the other hand, its 
climate was unlike any that he had ever sampled in 
equatorial regions, being extraordinarily healthy, and 
though there were no evidences of a very dry season 
the rain that fell, mostly in the night, was lacking in 
tropical force. His only explanation of the phenome- 
non was that the Aristo must have been carried 
far out of her course by the same disturbance that had 
flung him and his companion on a scrap of land that 
for all he knew might be somewhere as much further 
out of his calculations. 

The country rose gradually on all sides from the 
strip of beach and the caves where the two castaways 


37 


38 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

had practically established themselves; but while be- 
hind the caves it swept upward some distance due east, 
on the north it rose more abruptly to a swelling 
grassy plain that crowned the low cliffs and was more 
accessible than the dense bush to the south. Trelawny 
had early climbed to the top of this ascent, as being 
less difficult than the others, and about half a mile in- 
land found that he had reached as high a point as any 
in the islet — for it was little more — and could catch 
a glimpse of the blue sea that ringed him in all round 
the horizon. Below him, on the north-east, ran that 
extraordinary seam, like the track of a storm, that he 
had noticed on first regaining consciousness, and which 
was finally lost from his sight in a dip between two 
hills. But he could see sufficient of the coast to judge 
that a further reason for the Island being uninhabited 
lay in the extreme difficulty of landing. On the north 
coast were precipitous cliffs guarded by he knew not 
what dangers of hidden rocks, and on the west was 
the dangerous reef which extended far along the south 
side. The thickest of the forest land lay towards the 
south, whose bays and inlets were in consequence 
somewhat hidden from him by its deep fringes of 
vegetation ; but enough of the general outline was visi- 
ble to satisfy him as to its geography. 

His hunting expeditions usually took him north- 
east, in the seam or furrow that he began to call the 
Gorge, for the rift it had made in the vegetation caused 
a natural pathway if a very rough one. The Island 
must have been volcanic in its origin, he concluded, 
and not — as he at first supposed from the reefs — 
one of a coral group. He infinitely regretted that his 
experience round about the world, and through his 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


39 

profession, had not made him more skilful in turning 
wild nature to his own account, and lamented to the 
girl: 

If I had only been a Navy man, or even a beastly 
Sapper, I could have found a use for half the things 
that floor me, and made our rescue more likely, 
Tommy! ” he said. Even though he knew her name 
he still called her Tommy, and treated her much as a 
delicate boy who must be worked carefully, but by no 
means allowed to shirk. 

“ I think you are wonderful anyway,” said the girl 
honestly. “ I should never have thought of using 
those creepers for rope-fibre, and fishing-nets, and 
things! ” 

“ Oh, that’s nothing — simply a necessity. You 
want a net, and you look round for something to make 
it of, that’s all. I found out about the fish coming 
to a light by a fluke. I went down to the stream one 
night to get some water, and as there was no moon 
I took a bunch of dried ferns, half alight, for a torch. 
By Jove! you should have seen the beggars swarm 
round ! The water was thick with fish, all gaping 
and half dazed. I saw that if they would do that in 
the stream they would in the rock pools. Of course 
it’s an old poacher’s trick.” 

“ I do hate spearing them though ! ” said the girl, 
with a little fastidious shudder. “ And the wood isn’t 
really sharp enough — ugh ! ” 

“ Stick to the net then. These creepers are invalu- 
able. But there’s some way of plaiting bark that I 
don’t know, though I must have seen natives doing it. 
Soldier-men are not taught to do anything outside 
their profession, and somehow we don’t learn any- 


40 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


thing for ourselves — except sport. I can use a gun, 
but unfortunately I haven’t got one.” 

“If you would get me some fibre or bark I think I 
could plait things — hats and baskets, I mean,” said 
the girl a little hesitatingly. She was never in haste 
to offer her services, and was rather ready to think 
she had done more than her share. But she could 
not let him be the more generous or willing. The 
virtues still seemed to her to be her prerogative. 

“ Could you ? ” — He looked at her a little curiously, 
perhaps doubting her skill, perhaps wondering why 
she had not tried before. “ I’ll get you the fibre fast 
enough. They don’t teach us to make hats in the 
Army ! By the way, I don’t think I ever explained to 
you who I am, or told you my name, though I asked 
yours. I am Miles Trelawny, a Major in the Car- 
bines.” 

“ Yes, I know,” said the girl, in the old curt fashion. 

“How do you know?” he asked in some surprise. 
He wondered if he could have talked in his sleep, or 
raved of his former life in some semi-delirium — he 
dreamed of it often enough, God knew! 

“ I was on the Aristo too,” said the girl. 

“ Oh, I see ! ” He looked at her for a moment as if 
about to say more, but checked himself. He had 
been going to say, “ I never saw you, then,” but it oc- 
curred to him that she might have been in the second 
or third class, and he avoided the explanation from 
her, instinctively. In any case she never called him 
by a name, and their intercourse had hardly increased 
for all the enforced intimacy during the first weeks 
of their life in the Island. Each had enough hard 
work in the day to secure food and to try to increase 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


41 


their mutual comfort, which prevented their coming 
much in contact, and at night they were tired and went 
naturally to rest. It was too hot to work in the middle 
of the day, and so wherever they might be — and 
sometimes the man was a mile or so inland — they 
rested till the Sun began to lose his power. But when- 
ever their immediate tasks were over it was one or the 
other’s duty to add to the beacon, and to collect wood 
and trash and build it yet higher and larger. Every 
night the man covered- it as well as possible with the 
dried seaweed, which was easily obtainable in the little 
bays and inlets of the coast, for it seemed that the 
sea had thrown up an inexhaustible supply; and this 
protection saved the wood somewhat from both rain 
and dews, as well as. did the shade from some co- 
coanut palms under which he had first laid it. Tend- 
ing the beacon was the one task at which the girl 
worked doggedly, for she was spurred by unspoken 
remorse at the memory of how nearly she had de- 
stroyed it. 

The large cave in which Trelawny had originally 
tended his companion was somewhat low, and ran in- 
wards at a gentle slope until at the furthest recess a 
man could not stand upright. But on the left of the 
entrance, towards the back, a large hole gave entrance- 
to a further cave, which had no available opening on 
the seaboard, but a long narrow shelf like a chimney 
ran up to the plateau of cliff land above, and was not 
so overgrown with grasses, but that it was fed with 
fresh air night and day. In this further cave the girl 
had soon made her own bed of seaweed in a natural 
hollow of the rock, and slept there by tacit agreement. 
She had to scramble through into her sleeping-place, 


42 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


but she was slight and fairly active and soon grew to 
know the position of every stone and ledge of rock, 
though there was little light. The man would have 
had some difficulty in climbing through, and kept his 
own bed of seaweed in the outer cave, in sight of the 
western sea and the unlighted beacon, towering 
darkly against the tropical sky which might be bright- 
ened from horizon to horizon by a full white moon 
or blazing with stars. Some restless fear of leaving 
this one hope of rescue seemed to grow on him as the 
days passed, rather than his becoming reconciled to 
his lot. Once or twice the girl, lying in the inner cave, 
heard him rise up from sleep and move out to the 
beach, where, as she guessed, he paced up and down. 
But by day they hardly spoke of the hope of a sail 
which was in both their minds, and as yet they had 
not referred to the strange Terror that brought them 
there. 

Some weeks must have passed before the man 
thought of recording the passing of time by a rough 
diary, and by that time he could only guess the month 
of November to be drawing to its close. The walls of 
the cave were fairly smooth, slabs of rocks breaking 
out one over the other into a moderate-sized dome, 
and on one of the further slabs, safe from storms 
and weather, he scratched a rough N with his knife, 
and added the number 25, that being, as far as he 
could calculate, the date. Every night he added an- 
other number until the month was done, and then 
began again with D for December. By this means he 
could judge better of the seasons and the food they 
might expect to find, and, according to his slight know)- 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


43 

edge of latitude, in what directions he might set his 
forlorn hope of a sail. 

It began to obsess him, that slight chance of rescue,, 
with the increasing monotony of the life. Day by 
day he saw the first beams of sun touching the dis- 
tant horizon from over the crown of the hills that 
rose behind the cave, and the shortening shadow of 
the land drawn back along the sea. Day after day he 
rose with the hope of morning in him, and went down 
to the sea to bathe, drying himself in the sun before 
the beams grew too fierce; and as the hours rolled 
slowly on to the golden glare of noon the hope grew 
more desperate as it receded from him. Day after 
day he worked doggedly to make himself too tired to 
think, for the , realization of his position was like a 
black fiend driving him before it, and too awful to be 
met face to face. Then when the light grew lower 
and he knew it was time to return and fish for the 
evening meal, he would suddenly be taken by panic 
fear that he had rfiissed some solitary ship that had 
come within hail and passed, not knowing of his ex- 
tremity, and never to return. And he would run, 
stumbling, back to the cave and the shore, always to 
find the unlit beacon and the girl, sullenly silent at her 
task of making a fire to cook such food as he would 
provide. The evenings were becoming a torture, and 
his sleep was broken by a nightmare of something 
passing — always passing — across the horizon, that 
he might not reach. It was then that he rose as the 
girl heard him and walked upon the beach, clenching 
his teeth, opening and shutting his hands, muttering 
to himself, praying for his reason. 


44 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


The loneliness of it! the loneliness! There is no 
space so vast and tenantless as that of a little island 
ringed around with unbroken seas. The land spaces, 
however vast, are at least to be reckoned by miles, 
though they be in the heart of the vastest continent. 
So far off — thousands of miles it may be — there is 
civilisation, habitations of other men, that thought 
goes out to reach. But here in the unknown seas one 
might race for ever and ever and never find another 
shore. 

“And though thy thought stretch leagues and leagues beyond. 

Still leagues beyond those leagues there is more sea ! ” 

It cowed him. He did not dare to think of it at last 
— hardly even to look at it. As. at first the terror of 
the strange horror that brought him there had made 
him shun the sea, so after a time he feared to think 
of it even as the road back to safer lands, and worked 
his way always inland, turning his back to the mock- 
ing glimpse of bright blue which every acclivity showed 
him. And still the silence, and the sweetness, and 
the longing, went on from day to day in unbroken mo- 
notony. 

It was in his vain endeavour to escape the sea that 
one day he went up the Gorge to collect firewood, of 
which the two castaways could never have too much. 
Small though the Island was, the formation of the 
hills inland was grand enough for mountain scenery. 
They lay fold within fold, their precipitous sides mere 
shelves of rock on which every green spoil of Nature 
that could had seized a foothold, and flung branch 
and tendril upward and downward to drape the bare 
walls. Where the Gorge narrowed it looked like one 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


45 


long, green corridor, and as Trelawny climbed and 
pushed his way the pendulous vines above his head 
hung down in unbroken festoons thirty, forty feet 
long, and the delicate tree-fern sprang upward from 
shelf and crevice to meet them ; but here and there the 
smaller trees had been uprooted, the bush flattened, 
by that Something that had torn whole layers of earth 
away from the gaping rock-bed. 

It was very hot in the Gorge, for the fresh sea- 
breeze was shut out by the overhanging hills, and 
hardly penetrated the winding pass. The perspiration 
streamed from the man’s burnt face and bare arms, 
but he pushed his way on doggedly, as if afraid to 
pause and listen. Now and then he stopped to break 
the smaller wood from one of the uprooted trees, al- 
ready somewhat dried and withered, or a broken 
branch to add to his increasing burden. Once a small 
snake whipped across his path, and with lightning 
quickness he struck at it with a rough staff he carried 
and broke its back. There was no fear in the move- 
ment, but a savage enjoyment that drew his lips back 
from his teeth and distorted his face to ugliness. As 
the day lengthened to evening a solitary bird call made 
him look up, and then, stealthily, he drew a sling from 
the bosom of his shirt, and waited until he could 
locate it. He had had some difficulty in making that 
sling, and it was finally contrived from the invaluable 
creeper fibre, and the skin of a wild rat which he had 
trapped and killed to hold the stone. But he was 
growing proficient in its use, and the little pelt had 
become elastic in the process. The call was repeated 

— the evening note of the doomed thing over his head 

— then he had seen it, and then the stone flew out and 


46 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

up, and a small body whirled in air and fell with a little 
thud not a yard from his feet. 

He picked up the limp little body and held it in his 
hand, looking at it curiously, as if he wondered what 
had happened. It was quite dead, for the blow and 
the fall together had knocked the life out of it at once, 
but the thing still felt warm in his hand. He did not 
know the species, but the plumage reminded him of a 
wagtail, and the long tail feathers increased the re- 
semblance. He stroked it gently, shaking his head 
as if it had been a useless kill, though his first thought 
had been for food, and he had often killed birds be- 
fore. They were very numerous, and save for the 
various gulls not large, but mostly bright-plumaged 
— small green parrots and a bird of paradise being the 
most common. He was still thinking, quite collectedly, 
that the bird was hardly worth taking back with him, 
when he was startled to hear himself talking, and he re- 
alized that his lips must have been framing speech for 
some minutes while his brain worked quite independ- 
ently. He had had a suspicion of this before, that he 
sometimes talked and whispered to himself uncon- 
sciously, but the sound of it in the dense silence 
frightened him to madness. 

“ I’ll come round after tiffin. Take the pony up to 
Sowerby Sahib, boy, he is playing this afternoon. 

. . . Sorry, Mrs. Lewes! I was in camp that 

week — ’pon my soul I was. . . 

That was what he was saying, and his ears tingled 
to listen, and his breath came short as the broken 
words increased. He spoke fast and garrulously for 
a minute as if he had quite lost control of himself, 
scraps of old conversations in India, fragments of 


tiie unofficial honeymoon 


47 

service orders, a snatch of controversy on technical 
subjects with a brother officer — all things past and 
done with. Then a bat swooped suddenly out of some 
hole in the cliffs above his head, and took its flight into 
the evening air, startling him with its twitter. He 
stared round him at the dense vegetation and the lonely, 
savage pass, and suddenly the words on his lips ended 
in a long, strange cry. For he was alone in the dread- 
ful Island in the dreadful seas, though his lips had 
babbled brightly with comrades long passed out of 
his life, and he had been wandering in a past civiliza- 
tion — 

He dropped the body of the bird, and turning, fled 
for his life the way he had come. How he managed 
to run over the rough earth and the tangles of under- 
growth he never knew, for he had found it laborious 
and slow work coming. But he was mad with terror 
of the loneliness, and the fear lent sureness and 
strength to his feet. He was flying from death in life, 
and the awful aloofness of that virgin valley in the 
hills where no foot of man had been save his own. 
He struggled and scrambled and pushed his way, until 
at last he flung down his bundle of wood to lighten 
himself, and burst out of the narrow Gorge into more 
open land. But instead of going back to the cave he 
turned with the instinct of a hunted thing and made 
for the grassy plateau to the north. He could not 
quite face the sea — the sea that walled him in and 
stretched out beyond his thoughts to a receding hor- 
izon that never linked him again with man. 

On the long grassy swell of the cliffs he threw him- 
self face downwards, his hands clutching at the earth, 
his body convulsed with shudders of fear, and above 


48 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

and around and about him the solitude became a ma- 
terial thing, a burden too great to be borne. With 
convulsed face and sobbing lips he crouched yet closer 
to the earth, shrinking away from it, trying to hide 
from it, feeling his reason no longer strong enough to 
struggle with it, a mere living thing crushed by the 
sense of its own impotence. 

The sunset over the sea at least was beautiful, and 
the girl used to like to sit in the warm, lengthening 
light, and to suck in the beauty to her own soul. If 
she were early with her preparations for supper, or 
the man were late, she gained these minutes to herself 
and enjoyed the broken fragments of poetry or prose 
that rose like flowers in her memory to express the 
scene before her. It was a silent joy, for she never 
tried to share it with her companion or discover if he 
had such thoughts also; but it lulled the trouble of her 
brain, which was gradually recovering from the shock 
it had had, and regaining its balance to the altered cir- 
cumstances around it. The girl went down to the wet 
line of sand on this evening, and sat with her hands 
clasped around her knees, her bare feet actually rest- 
ing on the brown line where the tide was going out. 
The sun dazzled her brown eyes and glorified her 
rough hair, but she was only thinking of the colours 
he left on the sea and sky as he dipped rapidly to the 
horizon. It was flecks of blood on the white foam 
over the reef, and an indigo sea, opaque and polished. 
The sky was like the colours in mother-of-pearl, and 
the deep green of the palms stood out against it to 
the south-west. The man was late in returning, and 
she hoped he might be later still. She rocked her body 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


49 

to and fro in a kind of lullaby to her scraps of remem- 
bered poems, always beginning and ending with the 
great “ Ode to a Nightingale ” : 

“ Magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, round fairy lands forlorn ! ” 

She said it aloud, slowly, for the exquisite pleasure of 
its description of the scene before her. 

“ Perilous seas, round fairy lands forlorn ! ” 

And then : 

“ Singing, ‘ And shall it be over the seas 
To a sweet little Eden on earth that I know? 

A mountain islet painted and peaked, 

Waves on a diamond shingle dash, 

Cataract brooks to the ocean run, 

Fairly delicate places shine! 

“ ‘ For the bud ever breaks into bloom on the tree, 

And a storm never wakes on the lonely sea/ ”... 

(The man was late to-night. The bread-fruit would 
be spoiled. And he had yet to catch fish, if he wanted 
some for supper. Well ! — she shrugged her shoul- 
ders. She did not care. She could eat wild fruit for 
supper. Certainly she would not trouble to fish for 
him.) 

‘“Or I would sail upon the tropic seas. 

Where fathom long the blood-red dulses grow, 

Drop from the rock and waver in the breeze, 

Lashing the tide to foam; while far below’” . . . 

Yes, the man was surely very late. 

She rose up at last, reluctantly, as the sun dipped 
below the horizon in one burning line, for it would be 
4 


50 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

dark very soon. The fire still smouldered round the 
big stones, of the oven, and she stood there a moment, 
expecting him to come in sight, weary and irritable. 
But the wild dusky bush remained unbroken by 
sound or sight, and a little fear crept into her heart. 
Supposing something had happened to him, and she 
were left alone! She had never dwelt much upon 
this fear before, he had seemed so strong and so capa- 
ble, so apt to take the lead and to say where he would 
go and at what time he would be back. She had re- 
sented the tasks he had set her, and half grudged him 
the adventures and explorations. But now she shiv- 
ered at the idea of having to look for him at night 
in the dark Gorge, and every moment made it more 
impossible to find him. With a desperate desire to 
see him appear, to look over the country while it was 
still light enough, she climbed hastily over the rocks 
and up the grassy slope to northward where they al- 
ways went to survey the Island. 

And there she found him, lying face downwards in 
the grass, speechless, because he was exhausted, but 
his fingers twitching still at the long tussocks. Had 
it not been for that movement she would have thought 
that he was dead, and when she fell on her knees beside 
him and laid her hands on his shoulders she was still 
afraid that he was badly hurt. Even when he raised 
his haggard face and glared at her she did not under- 
stand his trouble — she only knew that something 
dreadful had happened to him. It was not sunstroke 
— she had seen sunstroke in Australia ; yet it seemed 
a delirium, for he began to babble hoarsely of the 
horror all round them, and then burying his face on 
her knees as she sat beside him he begged her to hold 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


5i 

him, not to leave him, to come closer for God’s sake! 
— his voice ending in a scream of terror. 

What had happened to him ? What dire experience 
had come upon him in the Gorge ? She knew that he 
was mad, but she could find no cause for this sudden 
seizure. Only, she sat there beside him, gripping hold 
of his shoulders as he asked her, that he might realize 
her nearness, and feeling the long shudders that passed 
over his body, as the night fell about them, solemn and 
dense and silent. Sometimes he would move as if in 
pain, and press his seared face against her breast, but 
she knew that it was in his delirium, and that she was 
no more to him than the only other human being in the 
Universe. For as the night increased he whispered his 
horror to her, and through the broken mutterings she 
began to understand. He had stood face to face with 
utter desolation, and fled from the death in life. It 
was only words to her, but she recognized an awful 
phase of their solitude that she had not yet experienced, 
and never loosened her clasp, for by that alone could 
she help him. 

It was midnight she thought when at last she helped 
him to stumble to his feet, and led him down to the 
cave, finding her way by instinct and hampered by his 
still clinging to her. The fire was out, and she could 
not rekindle it, but she persuaded him to lie down, and 
with his head on her knees he slept fitfully. Twice he 
sprang up with a cry and she caught him back, while 
he whispered that he was afraid, as a child might in 
the dark. When the first glimmer of dawn began to 
lighten mysteriously over the sea she felt the dead 
weight of his body resting against her, and leaning 
down heard that his breathing was deep and regular. 


52 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


Very carefully she laid her hands upon his forehead 
and found that it was damp, and then, and not till 
then, she relaxed her tense attitude, and leaning her 
back against the wall of the cave tried to rest; but 
she did not leave him until he turned naturally in 
his sleep and stretched himself on the seaweed at her 
side, and then with cramped and aching limbs she lay 
down also, trembling and watching him still. Her 
eyes never closed until, long after the sun was up, he 
stretched himself and yawned, looking up at her with 
sane eyes. 

“ Hulloa, Tommy! I think I’ll go down and have 
a bath,” he said. “ Is there any bread-fruit ? I’m 
hungry.” 

She rose up, stiff and white, and without a word 
went to prepare breakfast for him. 


CHAPTER V 


“The very deep did rot, O Christ, 

That such a thing should be! 

Yea, slimey things did crawl with legs 
Upon an unknown sea.” — Coleridge. 

44 T T OW far up the Gorge have you been?” said 

AX the girl. 

It was late on the following afternoon, and they 
were making the fire for the evening meal. They had 
both slept during the heat of the day and on into the 
cooler hours, side by side on the dried seaweed of the 
cave; and wherever the man went the girl followed, 
watchfully. While he had been adding to the beacon 
and mending his net during the earlier morning she 
had stood within hail, her eyes sunken in her face for 
lack of sleep and the weariness of the strain she had 
undergone on finding him the night before; but until 
he dropped asleep at noon she never relaxed her guard 
of him. He did not remark on it, though as a rule 
they worked far apart, nor did he suggest going further 
than the beacon. Perhaps he dimly felt that he was 
glad of her presence, though he had not referred to 
his brief madness, and she hardly knew if he remem- 
bered it. 

“ About two miles, or two miles and a half, I 
think,” he said, kneeling down to focus the sun rays 
on the burning-glass. “ It is awfully rough, so that 
one can hardly judge the distance.” 

S3 


54 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


“ I think we ought to explore it as far as we can,’’ 
said the girl, with a new self-assertion. She had never 
attempted to take the lead in such matters before. 
“ The Island can’t be very large, as we can see right 
across it from that grassy cliff.” 

“ It’s about six miles at the broadest perhaps — 
from north to south. Not more than four from east 
to west, I should say.” 

“ And the Gorge leads east ? ” 

“ North-east. But then you must remember that 
it’s all mountainous that way, and full of bush, which 
makes it hard climbing. Look out, Tommy! that 
trash has caught ! ” 

The girl dropped on her knees beside the heap of 
wood and dead leaves, and shielded the flickering 
flame as best she might from what little wind blew in 
from the sea. For a minute the two strange ragged 
figures were absorbed over their task; then the wood 
began to crackle and the man with a sigh of relief sat 
back on his heels and watched the girl as she enlarged 
the fire beyond its usual size, and then began to bank 
it up. 

‘‘What’s that for?” he asked idly. 

“Aren’t you going to fish? I don’t want the fire 
to go out while we are in the rock pools ! ” 

“ Oh, I shan’t be ten minutes with any luck — I’m 
getting as professional at St. Peter! And you needn’t 
come if you want to watch the fire.” 

She winced as usual at the Biblical reference, but 
handed him a burning bundle of dry fern in silence, 
and persistently followed him down to the sea. 
Trelawny had, as he said, become expert with his net, 
for the silly fish rose to the light as if hypnotized if 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


55 

there were any in the pools. He caught two small 
ones, of a variety of mullet, and saying that that was 
enough for to-night, returned to the fire where he 
killed and cleaned the fish, and the girl roasted them 
before the blaze. It was as a fact more like toasting 
them, for she spitted them on a fork of mahoo, and 
held it heed fully just near enough the fire to cook. 

“ Let’s take some fruit with us and go up the Gorge 
to-morrow,” she said. “ I’ve made a kind of string 
bag out of that fibre you split for me — it will carry 
as much as we want. You can sling it over your 
shoulder.” 

“ But you couldn’t come up the Gorge — you’ve 
no idea how rough it is climbing, and barefoot too! ” 

“ My feet are quite hard. We can try, anyway. 
If we start at sunrise, and rest during the heat, we 
ought to get back before dark.” 

“ I wish I had a watch ! ” he said regretfully. “ It’s 
so difficult to judge within an hour or so, which would 
make all the difference to us.” 

“ Never mind. We must go by the sun.” 

“ But I’m sure you’ll never do it ! ” he ojected, look- 
ing at the slim, outlandish figure and the small sun- 
burnt face. “ It’s enough to kill you.” 

“ If it threatens to do that we must come back!” 
she said dryly. 

“ Better let me go alone ” — but his voice trailed off 
nervously she thought, and a troubled look came into 
his eyes as of some horror half remembered. 

“ No,” she said curtly. “ I’m coming too this time. 
I’ve never seen the Gorge. Is that done enough for 
you ? ” 

" Give it another brown the other side,” he said 


56 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

critically. “ Then we’ll let the fire down and roast the 
bread-fruit in the ashes.” 

The girl shrugged her shoulders a trifle impatiently, 
but she turned the mullet as he suggested while he 
scraped the bread-fruit with a sharp piece of conch 
shell. Trelawny was passably proud of the conch, 
which he had dragged out of its ocean bed one day 
when diving, and sharpened with patient labour on a 
wet slab of rock. It saved his precious knife, and he 
was always reluctant to trust his companion with that 
particular treasure. 

The girl took the fish carefully off the improvised 
fork after a minute, and, laying it on the broad 
leaves that served them for a dish, broke it in two and 
handed the man his portion in one of the gourds. She 
was strictly just in this division, and half unconsciously 
admired herself as she did so, for being the woman 
and the weaker vessel it seemed natural to her that 
she should have had the preference — not that she 
was more hungry than the man, but that she claimed 
it as her right. They used the wooden spoons and 
forks that they had fashioned out of cedar wood to 
break up the fish, and drank clear water from other 
gourds, for the Island abounded in varieties of cala- 
bash. Trelawny was with some clumsiness and much 
labour beginning to carve a wooden drinking-cup, but 
it would be some time before it was ready for use as 
he was afraid of using his knife save very gently. 

When the fish was eaten they rinsed the gourds out 
and dried them with leaves; but the girl saved the 
largest and best of the bones for a feminine purpose. 
Trelawny had managed to bore an eye in one or two, 
though most of them broke in the process, and these 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


57 


she could thread with the great creeper fibre and make 
shift to mend the rents that were already showing in 
her own and her companion’s ragged clothes. The 
average temperature was so warm that had they gone 
clad in leaves they would have taken no harm phys- 
ically. But at present it had not come to that. 

When the bread-fruit was roasted and eaten, Tre- 
lawny still lay by the ashes of the burnt-out fire, his 
hands clasped under his head and his bare knees drawn 
up. 

The girl watched him, without personal interest, 
but with the anxiety of a doctor in charge of a patient 
— the duty was there if not the kindliness. Now and 
then he moved a trifle restlessly, and once or twice 
the ghost of last night’s terror flickered in his eyes. 
She did not go away, even to bestow their uncouth 
dishes and spoons and forks in the ledges of the cave, 
but sat with her hands clasped round her own knees in 
the old half-sullen attitude. 

“ Tommy,” he said suddenly, with a piteous quiver 
in his voice that made her heart bound with fear, 
“ what do you think about? ” 

“ When ? ” she asked in her startled surprise. 

“ Now — when you’re not working — when you’re 
alone — when this cursed solitude comes down on you 
and seems a real thing — a kind of devil to drive you 
mad!” 

He half started up, shivering and shaking. But 
she had edged nearer and laid her hand on his knee 
soothingly, and he stopped as if recalled to himself. 

“ I think of all the things I know by heart that 
describe what I can see — poetry and hymns and 
songs and prose,” she said rapidly, speaking more to 


58 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

soothe him than from any desire to answer his ques- 
tion. “ I can remember a lot — Fve a good mem- 
ory.” She did not remember to thank God for that, 
but she did congratulate herself as upon a valuable 
possession. 

“ Oh — poetry ! ” he said, rather doubtfully. “ You 
might tell me — just to give me something to think of 
too. It would help me, perhaps — ” 

“ I don’t think you’d care for it,” said the girl, 
faintly superior still. But the need was too pressing 
to scruple whether he would appreciate the jewels she 
hoarded — whether he would even understand them. 
She began the great Ode, which she really did know 
by heart, and the measured cadences of the lines rose 
and fell in her young voice with a growing reverence. 
She had never been taught to recite, and her utterance 
was quite unstudied ; but he listened hungrily, and her 
real love for the poem lent her a momentary power of 
expression, for when it came to her favourite lines her 
voice dropped slower and the phrase seemed to hold 
them both in its embrace — 

“ The same which oft-times hath 
Charmed magic casements opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, round fairy lands forlorn ! ” 

“ Why, it’s Keats ! ” he broke in as she finished the 
poem. “ I thought I recognized it.” 

“ Did you know it? Did you ever read poetry?” 
she asked blankly in her amazement. 

“ Oh, yes, now and then. I used to be able to troll 
but * The Rubaiyat,’ but I never thought of doing it 
here! I’ve done a good deal of miscellaneous read- 
ing,” he added indifferently, seeing nothing strange in 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


59 


the fact. “What was that thing? The ‘Ode to a 
Nightingale,’ wasn’t it? We had a fellow in the Mess 
who was always spouting.” 

“ Do you like Shakespeare ? ” asked the girl ab- 
ruptly. She did not mean to be abrupt this time ; she 
was really rather shy. His knowledge was so much 
greater than she expected, and then there was no reck- 
oning the lore of the “ fellow in the Mess,” who might 
by chance really have been intellectual — as much so 
as Leslie Mackelt! 

“ Pretty well 1 liked him on the stage when I 

was Home ” he pulled himself up with a strange 

indrawing of his breath, as if he had chanced on a 
dangerous thought. “ Go on — say some more ! ” he 
commanded hoarsely. “ Don’t you know Omar — 
Omar Khayyam?” 

“ There was a Door to which I found no Key — 

There was a Veil past which I could not see — * 

Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee 

There seemed — and then no more of Thee and Me ! 

The Moving Finger writes; and having writ 
Moves on; nor all thy Piety and Wit ” 

“ Oh, I’ve forgotten it,” he said restlessly. “ Your 
turn now! Go on ” 

And she went on, headlong, in her fear for him, 
quoting anything that stayed in her memory — the 
speech on Mercy in the “ Merchant of Venice,” “ All 
the World’s a Stage,” a half-page that she remem- 
bered from Bacon’s “Essays,” a few lines from Ten- 
nyson, Longfellow’s “ Psalm of Life ” (her reading 
had been carefully chaperoned), one thing after an- 
other until her voice failed and grew hoarse and her 


6o 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


despairing heart, feared that she had come to the end 
of the easiest to repeat. But by that time his breath- 
ing was regular and quiet, and she thought he was 
falling asleep. As a bright half-moon came up the 
heavens, flinging a ladder over the sea to the lost 
shores of civilisation, it looked down on as strange a 
scene as any its light revealed that night — the wild 
shore of a tropical island, and two castaways, the man 
lying on his back, the girl crouching at his knees — 
both ragged and unkempt as any savages; but from 
the girl’s lips came the flow of winged words that 
sounded like music. 

For with a vague stirring of pity and responsibility 
in her heart, Leslie looked from the tranquil sea to the 
quiescent figure of the man, and began to croon rather 
than speak the last words that should help him slide 
into forgetfulness — 

“ Sweet and low — sweet and low — 

Wind of the western sea — 

Low, low, breathe and blow, 

Wind of the western sea. 

Over the rolling waters go, 

Come from the rising moon, and blow, 

Blow him again to me ! 

While my pretty one — while my loved one sleeps ! ” 

The voice was the voice of a mother singing to her 
baby, and all the hardness had gone out of the young 
face and the resistent figure. Her hand still rested on 
the man’s knees, pitifully, as though she included him 
somehow in her lullaby to the dream-child that all 
girls carry at their breasts. 

“ Sleep and rest — sleep and rest — 

Father will come to thee soon! 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


61 


Rest, rest, on mother’s breast — 

Father shall come to thee soon. 

Father shall come to his babe in the nest. 
Silver sails all out of the west, 

Under the silver moon! 

While my little one — while my pretty one sleeps ! ” 


They started for the Gorge the next morning at 
daybreak. Leslie had slept well, once she was assured 
that Trelawny was in no danger of a recurrence of 
his madness, and was fresh and ready for the expe- 
dition. Indeed, it acted like a tonic on them both, 
for the novelty of it broke the sameness of the life and 
destroyed its maddening sense of loneliness for the 
time being. They took no fish with them, bread-fruit 
being sufficient for the day, but this and some wild 
lemon Trelawny carried in the “ string bag ” the girl 
had constructed, slung over his shoulder. Both of 
them carried staves, and had covered their heads with 
plaited palm leaves that bore a remote resemblance 
to hats. Before the sun was clear of the mountainous 
country of the interior they had left the beach behind 
them and were following the track that Trelawny had 
made in former expeditions. 

At first the girl found the way difficult, and the bush 
through which they had sometimes to struggle a seri- 
ous impediment. But she pushed on bravely, and 
would not listen to the man’s suggestion that she 
should turn back after the first mile. She had grown 
stronger and more upright in the open air and the 
health-giving breezes that blew over the Island, and 
really did not feel the lassitude and fatigue which 
had hitherto made roughing it in northern Queens- 
land a weariness to the flesh and spirit also. As the 


62 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


sun came over the hills and the dew began to rise they 
were well into the Gorge, and passed the first of the 
bundles of wood that Trelawny had flung down when 
he fled from it in terror. Neither the man or the girl 
commented on these silent witnesses of his passing 
madness, but Leslie hastily drew his attention to a 
strange tree that began to mark the inland vegetation, 
and which was as prolific as the bread-fruit and wild 
lemon. 

“ Are these good to eat ? ” she asked, pointing to 
the gold and green globes under the tuft of leaves at 
the top of a particularly bare stem. 

“ Oh, yes — that’s papau. It’s rather insipid but 
it’s juicy. Like some?” he said laconically, and they 
sat down on the ground to sample the tropical fruit, 
which reminded the girl not a little of a melon with 
the taste left out. 

“ I think I shall collect some grass and ferns and 
dry them for a bed,” she said idly, as they resumed 
their journey. “ It would be softer than the sea- 
weed.” 

“ All right — I can bring you cartloads,” he as- 
sented. “ But I never found the weed too rough — 
or else I sleep so sound that as a rule the hard sand 
would be good enough for me ! ” 

“ Your weed is on the sand, and you’ve hollowed 
it for a bed-place,” objected the girl. “ I’ve got the 
hard rock under me ! ” 

“ So you have, Tommy — I forgot that. Well, 
we’ll begin making hay for you to-morrow,” he said 
kindly enough, though he seemed to think it a fancy 
for luxury. “ Look at those butterflies ! how gorgeous 
they are.” 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 63 

“ It’s always gorgeous ! ” said the girl with a sigh. 

So it was — gorgeous with colour spilled from Na- 
ture's inexhaustible paint-box, on the wings of the 
birds and the butterflies, and the blossoms of flowers 
and leaves of plants. For the hybiscus and the crotan 
fought for breathing space in the Gorge where the 
wild vines and the creepers gave them light and air 
enough, and the birds of paradise and the parrots 
rivalled the great insects that were as winged flowers. 
Overhead the sky was deepening to the heart of a tur- 
quoise, and all about them the dew glistened on great 
spiders’ webs, spun from fern to branch and from 
bush to palm. 

A mile further and they had reached the limit of 
Trelawny’s exploration — the hot silence and the lone- 
liness that had driven him mad. Here was the branch 
from which he had seen the bird drop at his feet — it 
was gone now, for the ants and the rats had done 
their work — but the place was marked in his mem- 
ory by the bread-fruit trees that grew here and some 
kind of citron half smothered in a vine whose tracery 
had overgrown it, for all the world like a green Shet- 
land shawl! He paused half uneasily, hesitated, 
and sent a look back along the track, as though some 
impulse were urging him to drop his staff and flee ; but 
the girl thrust her hand with sudden imperiousness 
into his. 

“ I can’t get over this rough bit of the track — the 
stones hurt my feet,” she said breathlessly. “ You 
must help me ! ” 

The nervous clasp of her small hard fingers on his 
own seemed to recall him to himself — the touch of 
humanity defying the loneliness of Nature. He 


64 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

gripped them harder than he knew, for she bit her lips 
to keep back a cry, and with his other hand under her 
armpit he lifted her over the broken ground that sud- 
denly altered the character of the Gorge. A minute 
later they both uttered an exclamation, for pushing 
their way through the veil of vines and branches they 
had emerged into an opening, where the land fell back 
on either hand, the hills widening into a cup and then 
narrowing again to a vista that ended in a far line of 
sea. 

“ Why! there's the other side of the Island! If I’d 
only gone on I should have found it before! ” he ex- 
claimed. “ I told you it was only three or four miles 
from west to east.” 

“ Ah! but the sea is a mile or so off us yet! ” said 

the girl wisely. “ All down that further chasm 

What on earth is tha't water down there ? ” 

They had turned their faces to the north-east, and 
looked, in a sudden silence. For where the hills 
widened out almost in a semicircle, there lay at their 
feet as it were the sullen gleam of a dead lake. It 
was water undoubtedly, but so dark as to look black, 
and round the edge of it was a dark brown patch, as 
if the green, living world had drawn back its skirts 
from something accurst. It lay some fifty feet away, 
and below them, in what would have been a little val- 
ley but for its presence, and by a natural instinct they 
seemed to know what it must be and to hold their 
breath. 

It was the man who spoke first. 

“ Come along,” he said, and his teeth were set and 
his voice odd and jerky. “We must go down there 
and see.” 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 65 

The girl held back, but only for a moment. 

‘‘Must we?” she said wistfully. “Can’t we — 
leave it? It looks so dead, and — horrible!” 

“ I’m going, anyway.” 

“ Very well, then I’m coming too.” 

The hill-side was rough enough to daunt them, even 
after the bush they had left, and it was only by half 
scrambling and half clinging that they lowered them- 
selves down to the very shore of that strange lake, and 
pushing through the last green fringe of vegetation 
found that all round its edge life had shrivelled and 
died, and that the shores of it were themselves dark, 
oozy brown, while upon its breast floated a strange 
sediment that looked like dirty white clay. Trelawny 
leaned down with his lips still set and dipped his finger 
in the water, touching it afterwards with his tongue. 
It was brackish — nay, salt ; and yet they were a mile 
at least from the good clear sea, and this water was 
dead and without reason for its existence there. 

The girl did not speak, but for a minute they looked 
into each other’s eyes with whitening faces. 

“ I thought so,” he said. “ This is what brought 
us here! ” 

“ But — but — how could it ! ” pleaded the girl, as 
if fighting the horror of her fear all over again. “And 
we find it here — right across the Island ! ” 

“ Yes, of course — it tore its way through the 
Gorge, and was received in this cup in the hills. The 
force was expended then — ” 

She did not answer, but somehow they found them- 
selves side by side, sitting at the blackened rim of that 
fell water, their eyes fixed on it as if fascinated. 

“ It must have been an earthquake under the sea — 
5 


66 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


such things do take place, particularly in these lati- 
tudes. Some body of water must have been detached 
and hurled for miles and miles across the surface of 
the sea. We were in its path — that’s all.” 

“ Yes, but — the rest of the people — the ship it- 
self? ” 

“ I can’t tell. They may even have escaped. It 
was travelling too fast for me to see — but some dis- 
tance above the level of the ocean — ” 

He hid his face in his hands, shuddering. And the 
horror and the stunned incredulity of their first com- 
ing back to life shook them again. Overhead the 
sky mocked them with its blue, and the sunshine 
danced on the dead surface of the sullen water with 
its floating fragments. 

Suddenly the girl pulled him by the arm. 

“ Come away ! ” she said fiercely. “ Come away 
from this place — it is no good brooding. It is hide- 
ous and under a ban — let us get on, down the further 
Gorge.” 

He stumbled to his feet and followed her, as if 
mechanically, past the black sheet of water to the 
further slope up which they toiled into fresher air. 
After a while it grew too hot to push on further, and 
they rested on the fern and grasses, and ate their fruit, 
until the cooler afternoon allowed them to scale the 
high cliffs overhanging the sea. Here they emerged 
somewhat abruptly, and found the coast even more 
precipitous than on the north and west, the great rocks 
running out into the water like bastions. 

“ Not much to be seen here, except some good fish- 
ing pools,” said Trelawny succinctly. “ And I sus- 
pect there would be sharks. We’re on the best side 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 67 

of the Island, Tommy — Heavens ! what was that? ” 

A big brown bird had scuttled past them and dis- 
appeared into the thick bush, startling them by its 
sudden appearance. It would have surprised them in 
any case, for it was so much larger than any bird they 
had yet seen; but what really caused Trelawny’s ex- 
clamation was its extraordinary resemblance to any 
ordinary hen — an English fowl, speckled and moth- 
erly if rather thin, that might be seen in any farm- 
yard. The sound it uttered, too, as it fled was the 
familiar cluck ! cluck ! of a hen, though its appearance 
here on a desert island in the tropics was as incredible 
as if a magic table spread with golden dishes had sud- 
denly risen out of the earth. It had vanished as sud- 
denly as it appeared, however, and no pushing further 
into the bush could discover its whereabouts, though in 
his excitement Trelawny would fain have lingered. 
The lengthening light at last warned them that they 
must turn westward if they would get through the 
Gorge before darkness fell, and they hurried on their 
way, still eagerly discussing the mystery — far more 
so than the existence of the dead salt water, which 
they repassed almost unnoticed. 

“ You know,” the girl kept on saying as they re- 
traced their way through the Gorge, “it could not 
have been a hen! Then what was it? ” 

“ Some species of bird far larger than I know to 
exist here, I suppose,” said Trelawny, as he pushed 
a path for her by going first through the bush. “ But, 
anyhow, it’s a find. If we can only get hold of more 
birds like that we shall get eggs at least, and they may 
be more eatable than the sea-birds.” 

“I can’t get over its clucking !” 


68 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


“ Well, it was distinctly of the same species as our 
fowls, so naturally it made the same kind of row.” 

“ But a hen , here! It’s impossible.” 

“We should have said that beastly salt water was 
impossible in such a place if we hadn’t seen it.” 

“ What will you do? ” 

“ Go over to the north side again and see if I can 
get hold of another phantom hen ! ” 

For the first time she laughed — a little faint sound 
that was only the beginning of mirth, so out of use did 
it seem. “Fancy, hunting a hen! — an ordinary 
barn-door fowl! If you do get hold of one, don’t 
kill it — do bring it back alive ! ” 

“For the sake of the eggs, you mean?” said the 
man practically. 

“ No — because — it seemed so like — home ! ” she 
breathed, and then, because tears are so near to laugh- 
ter, her eyes filled after her poor little merriment, and 
she was glad she was walking behind him — he might 
have scolded her. 

But he did not. Instead, when the path grew 
roughest, he turned back and lifted her over the 
broken ground with more human consideration than 
he had yet had heart to show her since the wicked 
water flung them side by side into awful solitude. 

“ You’re tired, Tommy,” he said kindly. “ It is 
better going now — lean on me.” 


CHAPTER VI 


{ Alas, Night/ Then the stagnant season lay 
From hill to hill. But when the waning moon 
Rose, she began with hasty steps to run . . . 
Silent, — for all her strength did bear her dread — 
Like one who wrestles in the dark with fiends, 

‘ Alas, Night ! ’ With a dim wild voice of fear, 

As though she saw her sorrow by the moon.” 


Sydney Dobell. 



RELAWNY made numerous excursions over to 


-■* the north of the Island after the first explora- 
tion, but he never contrived to kill or capture a bird 
of the large species they had both seen. Once, in- 
deed, he returned in the same state of excitement, 
positive that the “ phantom hen ” had passed him 
again, and run, clucking, into the bush; but it had 
been too late in the day to follow far, and he could 
only puzzle and speculate as to the creature’s ex- 
istence in a solitary condition, for he never came 
across traces of any mate for it, or of its young. If 
the Aristo had had live fowls on board, he might 
have even entertained the wild theory that one of 
them had been carried to the Island like themselves, 
and flung on the northern coast ; but the steamer, like 
other ships of her class, had carried her eggs in cold 
storage and had had no live stock save the cows. His 
expeditions were of use in other ways, however, for he 
discovered wild mulberries and yam, and other fruits, 
all of which would increase their store of food in due 


70 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


season. There was also honey, made by a bee no 
larger than a common fly, and stored in the hollow 
parts of trees; but it was so fluid as to be difficult to 
carry in the gourds which were his only vessels, and 
the danger of collecting it made it a rare luxury in their 
diet. 

At first the girl insisted on accompanying him when 
he went far afield, sharing his fatigue and labour with 
dogged endurance. But as his restlessness left him 
and the unnatural terror did not recur, she gradually 
relaxed her vigilance and allowed him to work alone 
again, only walking out some way to meet him when 
she knew that he ought to be returning, timing herself 
by the sunset. Trelawny was busy making a fresh 
beacon to the north-west, and even at the extreme 
north of the Island, and was rarely idle, coming back 
to the cave so tired that after fishing he would fre- 
quently drowse over his supper, and talked as little 
as ever. He had cut and dried the grass and fern for 
his companion as he promised, and she rested far more 
comfortably on her softer bed in the inner cave. If 
he had had any implements he would have tried to cul- 
tivate a plot of land between the stream of fresh water 
and the cave ; but he had nothing save his rough staff 
and his bare hands, and though he might have trans- 
planted the smaller plants it was hopeless to think of 
the young trees on which would grow the fruit they 
wanted, and he had no grains with which to experi- 
ment. He did keep the seeds of melon and papau 
and dry them, but it would be long before they would 
germinate and reward his labour — so long that he 
was planting for a future need of which he would not 
let himself think. The beacon represented his hope. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


71 

and he kept the possibility of rescue steadily before 
him as the pivot of his sanity. The planted seeds, on 
the other hand, suggested a continued necessity for 
food as years rolled by that was intolerable to con- 
template. He worked feverishly to cheat himself of 
brooding, and hardly noticed how the days passed by. 

There was less for the girl to do. The preparing 
of the food he brought, and the mending of their 
clothes, or the plaiting of fibre, did not prevent her 
thinking. Less practical and experienced than Tre- 
lawny, she did not concentrate her attention on her 
employment for the sake of her own health, arid be- 
gan to spend the long hours in brooding while he was 
away. Even the stock of poetry and prose in her 
memory no longer soothed her, and at times it seemed 
to her that her mind was almost blank save for a sen- 
sation of despair. The succession of blue days and 
golden sunshine and the luxuriance of Nature was be- 
coming a horror to her, as if God were visibly mock- 
ing her misery and destitution which He had decreed. 
It must change — it must surely change! It was 
impossible that her life after twenty-one short years 
must be lived out in this cramped fashion, starved of 
everything but the vivid power of existence in her 
strengthening limbs. She was too much alive to die, 
and yet all that constitutes life was taken from her — 
its possibilities and its very meaning. It was impos- 
sible that this state of things could continue! — And 
still the silence, and the sweetness, and the longing, 
went on as before. 

One day — she had lost count of sunrise and sun- 
set — she went into the cave about noon, not to sleep 
but to find her store of fishbone needles, carefully 


72 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


kept in one of the natural rock-cupboards where she 
and Trelawny placed their treasures. Leslie Mackelt 
presented a strange appearance indeed by now. Her 
short hair had grown to an uncomfortable length that 
was neither the boy’s curly crop or the girl’s long 
tresses. It fell in untidy locks over her sunburnt face 
and she shook it fiercely out of her eyes after stoop- 
ing, its very thickness adding to her unkempt appear- 
ance. Her linen shirt had been torn and cobbled up 
many a time, and in spite of such washing and bleach- 
ing as she could do was stained with the juice of fruit 
and berries, while her knickerbockers hung in shreds 
at her bare knees. It was to mend a rent gained in 
the Gorge that she was looking for the fishbone needles 
and some fibre thread. If the bone snapped she had 
now some huge thorns that Trelawny had discovered 
and brought back for her to try; but the sewing was 
almost as elementary as Eve’s. 

The broad midday light was so strong that it pene- 
trated even to the back of the cave and showed her 
the arched roof and the walls, slab over slab of smooth 
rock where Trelawny had cut the dates of the month 
as the days passed. She stood near his sleeping-place 
— the rough bed of seaweed in the hollowed sand — • 
and looked vacantly at the record scratched on the 
stone, last night’s number as neatly cut as any, though 
he had been so full of sleep. Trelawny was a method- 
ical person, and never neglected a duty he had set 
himself, however disinclined. Leslie was aware, at 
the back of her mind, that in his place she would often 
have to let a date slip on the plea of picking it up on 
the morrow, and so would have produced an even 
less reliable calendar. The knowledge of her own 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 73 

shortcoming irked her, even in her own mind, and 
made her irritable. 

The last date that Trelawny had scratched up on 
the rock the night before was 24, and the letter at the 
beginning of the months' numerals was D. Leslie 
Mackelt read it mechanically, but it made no impres- 
sion on her mind. D — that stood for December. 
The 24th of December then was yesterday, according 
to their calculations, and to-day was the 25th. De- 
cember 25th — where had she heard that date specially 
accentuated before, and what did it mean? Decem- 
ber 25th ! But her mind wandered away to the time 
that had elapsed since they had been cast on the Island 
— to the wicked salt lake beyond the Gorge — to the 
ship that might have been swamped for all they knew. 
She wondered if her brother Donald were dead, and it 
came upon her with a little shock that if so he had 
been dead some weeks and she had never mourned for 
him — never speculated as to the possibility of her 
loss. The stranding of her own life had seemed so 
sufficing in its horror that she had not thought to cal- 
culate her losses in the civilized world beyond the hori- 
zon. How long had they been on the Island? She 
ran her finger slowly up the crooked figures, calcu- 
lating slowly. About six weeks. And now it was 
December 25th. . . . 

December 25 th! 

She knew suddenly that it was Christmas Day, and 
looked round her with the eyes of one startled by a 
new horror. Christmas Day! The emptiness of the 
hot, blue sky and the vertical beams of the sun stared 
her in the face as if looking to see how she took the 
curious fact, while she glared back at them like a 


74 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


creature at bay. Somewhere in the real world was 
frost and snow, holly and ivy and church bells — the 
images of her former Christmases tumbled over each 
other in her mind, while later knowledge reminded her 
of the summer heat of the antipodes, Christmas in 
Australia with flowers and fruit and holiday merri- 
ment. 

But everywhere on earth it was a festival, or so it 
seemed to her tempest-tossed mind, everywhere but 
here in this small lost islet where God had flung and 
then forgotten her. Neither she nor Trelawny had 
taken heed of the date, or remembered the birth of 
Christ in this Christless corner of the world. Was it 
wonderful, when God had forgotten them? 

She sat down at the mouth of the cave, staring at 
the dazzle of sea and sky and white beach, and it 
seemed as if her mind went into a trance. Old inci- 
dents connected with the Christmas season recurred 
to vex her, and she teased herself with dwelling on the 
presents she had set her heart upon, even as a child, 
and never obtained — of the unnatural cheerfulness of 
the service in chapel, and the oppressive dinner of beef 
and plum pudding in company with her brothers, who 
had been at best half strangers to her, but whose clan- 
nishness caused them to regard a family gathering at 
Christmas as something almost like a religious duty. 
For Christmas to Leslie Mackelt had hardly been a 
time of good-will, even in the real world. It was a 
ceremony rather than a festival. And there had been 
no parties or Christmas-trees for her as for other 
children, the merry-making being limited to afternoon 
teas amongst the older portion of the congregation, at 
which the children had sat silent and very quiet. Last 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


75 


year her youngest brother’s place in the family circle 
had been empty — he had gone to his death in the 
mission fields of Africa, and the blessedness of his 
attainment was much insisted upon in references by 
the two surviving brothers, Donald especially waxing 
fervent over reminiscences. The little sister, starved 
of the demands of her nature, had sat silent, wonder- 
ing how Alec had found any beauty in the life of 
ceaseless serious effort ending in death before he had 
reaped any of the possibilities of existence — and had 
hated herself for her infamy. It was all wrong, in 
her pitiful narrow phrase, and she was wrong in her- 
self to feel it so. That was the Christmas thought to 
Leslie Mackelt. 

She must have sat at the mouth of the cave for some 
hours, for when she again became conscious of her 
surroundings the light was low and golden, and the 
beautiful transformation of the sunset was beginning 
over the sea. The solemn beauty of it held her in a 
vice for a few minutes, while it seemed that the real 
world hummed off into distance with its ugly matter- 
of-fact memories, and nothing was left but an utter 
emptiness. It came upon her with crushing realiza- 
tion that the universe was too large for the narrow 
creed taught her — that God was not to be confined 
inside chapel or out — that all her life had been so 
cramped and small that now — - now — she was doubly 
lost because so much alone in such vast seas. Her 
thought went out and out to the horizon, and found 
more sea, and the solitude came down and struck 
her like a material thing, as it had done the man. 
She started up, gasping with terror, mad to get 
away to the boundaries that she knew, anywhere, 


76 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

out of this eternal loneliness. And then she began to 
run — 

Trelawny was late back that evening, for he had 
found good store of food, new fruits and roots, and 
some parrots that he had succeeded in bringing down 
with his sling. His burden was heavy and he walked 
slowly, glad that he need not fish on account of the 
birds; but when he reached the mouth of the Gorge he 
was surprised that Leslie was not there to meet him. 
He wondered if they had missed each other, hoped 
not, for dark was coming on, and quickened his steps. 
But the cave and beach were deserted, and there was 
no fire lit or food prepared. He swore mechanically, 
and then checked himself, ashamed of the raw word 
in the stillness. Then he looked round him help- 
lessly, realizing for the first time how much he owed 
to companionship and how lost he should feel if quite 
alone. 

There was nothing to tell him the way that she had 
gone, but his growing uneasiness and the rapidly 
fading light made him hurry from one point to an- 
other, startling the silence with his voice. “ Tommy ! ” 
he called. “ Tommy ! ” It had the most eerie effect 
in that wild solitude, and a faint echo from the Gorge 

gave him back his voice — “ my ! ” like a ghostly 

answer. He began to fear that she had met with an 
accident, and ran down the beach to see if she had 
slipped on the rocks, then up to the northern headland 
to hunt for her on the slopes, and back to the cave 
in case she had hurt herself and crawled there for 
shelter. 

It was too late now to light a fire, and he cursed his 
carelessness for not doing so sooner, and having the 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


77 

light to assist him. Besides, there was the beacon. 
Even if he could distinguish a sail now across the 
darkening waters he had no means of setting a light 
to it save by the long and almost hopeless process of 
friction. As a rule they banked the embers of their 
supper fire to smoulder till morning, that they might 
have a speedy light. 

He had mechanically begun to make his way to- 
wards the beacon as he thought of it, and emerging 
suddenly on the cliff caught sight of the figure he 
sought standing out on the promontory, outlined 
against the fading colours of the sunset. She was 
standing rigidly still, with glassy eyes fixed on the 
sky, and as he approached her he saw that her lips 
moved though she uttered no cry. The next instant 
he had sprung forward and was wrestling with her, 
putting out all his man’s strength to resist her frenzied 
effort to hurl herself over the low cliff on to the bed 
of rocks below. He had no idea that her slight body 
could have been so violent in its madness, and it was 
all he could do to drag her step by step out of danger, 
the while she shrieked and wailed to him to let her go 
— anywhere — out of it — the loneliness — the 
empty world that was killing her 

“ Be quiet ! ” he said through his teeth, and the 
beads of moisture broke out on his forehead as he 
struggled to hold her. “ You shall not, I say — you 
shall not ! ” 

He had pinioned her arms at last, and flung her 
down on the short grass, behind the great pile of the 
beacon. But his own face was haggard as he knelt 
beside her, holding her safe from her own insane im- 
pulse, while she sobbed miserably, and quivered in 


78 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

his grasp. He remembered his own madness, and 
wondered how long it had lasted. Had she sat out 
with him all night, with a woman’s patience, and had 
he fought and raved like this? Once she almost 
eluded him by writhing in his grip as if he hurt her, 
and when he relaxed it springing up and running like 
a deer for the cliff-edge again. Had she not tripped 
over some loose brushwood lying by the beacon she 
would have been over. After that he held her in his 
arms, pressed against his breast, and dared not loosen 
his hold for an instant. He could feel her tears wet 
on his bare throat, but could not follow her mutter- 
ings. 

After a time she ceased to struggle, and lay limply 
in his arms. He staggered to his feet at last, and 
carried her slowly down to the cave, even as she had 
once led him, setting himself at the mouth of it with 
his back to the stone as she had done, and the little 
boyish figure resting on his knees. His own eyes 
were wet as he patted the rough head, and felt him- 
self helpless to shield her from the terror that was 
crushing her down. The solitude had had them both 
in its grip, victims of its relentless reality. 

“ Poor Tommy ! ” he said brokenly. “ Poor 
Tommy ! ” 

She stirred, and he thought she was delirious, for 
she repeated something about “ Christmas Day ” ; 
but when the words came over and over again he be- 
gan to think and to find a connection in them. 

“ Is it Christmas Day?” he said gently. “We had 
forgotten, hadn’t we.” And then again, “ Poor 
Tommy! ” 

“ Christmas Day ! ” she babbled in a new spasm 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


79 


of fear, and then, “ All alone in all the world! — 
Don’t leave me ! ” her voice rising to a shriek of 
terror. 

“ Hush ! I’m not going to leave you. Lie still,” 
he said firmly, and then he found to his relief that by 
stretching out his hand he could reach the load of food 
he had brought home. The birds must go, and would 
probably be uneatable in the morning, but he picked 
up some fruit and made her eat it, feeding her like a 
child. It reminded him of the first days on the 
Island, when she had slowly struggled back to life, 
and he had nursed her — more from the selfish desire 
of companionship than any nobler motive. Now she 
was again like a sick child, and he felt the tenderness 
with which young and helpless things had always in- 
spired him. So far she had not earned even his liking 
beyond what he might have given to an ill-trained boy 
forced on him by circumstances. He had seen all her 
faults, and had resented her selfishness with closed 
lips, use making her tolerable, but certainly not attrac- 
tive to him. There was something repellent or defiant 
in her manner, even in the slight communication be- 
tween them, and he had not cared to know more of her 
than the need of every day. His mind, always fixed 
on possible escape from the prison of this desert 
Island, had taken but listless interest in the things at 
hand, Leslie Mackelt among the number. Now he 
felt a twinge of remorse at having left her to bear her 
part of the mental burden alone, and for never having 
displayed even a feigned interest in her past life, or 
told her of his. She had seemed to him a strange, un- 
attractive nature; but he must have seemed to her a 
little cruel. 


8o THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


“ Tommy,” he said at last, “ are you asleep? ” 

She looked up with dark, wet eyes — he could see 
them shine in the darkness — into his rough, unshaven 
face. He was almost as wild and unkempt a figure 
as she. 

“ No,” she said desperately, “ I’m afraid to sleep ! ” 
“ You’ll go to sleep presently,” he consoled her, and 
his voice was very kind. “ There’s nothing to be 
afraid of now. I’m going to stay here with you — 
you’ll sleep all right if I’m here.” 

She sighed a little, as if with relief, and laid her 
head back against his shoulder. It seemed to him 
rather pitiful that she should feel so light and slender, 
for he had not hesitated to give her her share of work 
since their enforced partnership. She had looked 
tired sometimes — he remembered that now; at the 
time he had only been grimly determined that she 
should not shirk. And she had stood by him with 
real pluck when the solitude-horror had descended on 
him. It was his turn to show her a comrade’s duty 
now. 

“ Tommy,” he said, rather awkwardly, bending his 
head down to the tense white face. “ Try to pull 
yourself together — don’t back out on it like you 'tried 
to-night — don’t leave me — alone ! ” 

He did not know if she heard, for she did not an- 
swer. But she lay there across his knees, resistless, 
and it seemed that after awhile they both slept, while 
the Christmas stars came out one by one in a glorious 
summer sky, looking down on the two waifs of hu- 
manity as on other flotsam flung on desert shores. 


CHAPTER VII 


“When the play began between them for a jest, 

He played king and she played queen to match the best. 
Laughter soft as tears, and tears that turned to laughter, 
These were things she sought for years and sorrowed after.” 

A. C. Swinburne. 

T HEIR discovery of the mutual derangement 
liable to fall on them at any time, drew the 
two castaways closer together, as tramps on a winter 
night will make common cause and sit cheek by jowl 
for the sake of warmth, though strangers to each 
other. The instinctive desire for sympathy and help 
in their dreaded experience made the man and the 
girl loathe to be left alone — it even drew them near 
to each other when sitting over their supper, or at such 
times as they were at leisure, which, however, were 
rare. They called it the Solitude-Madness, and 
watched each other furtively to see if it were likely to 
recur, the least symptom bringing one or the other 
quickly to the rescue with some new plan of labour, 
or an exploration of the Island that should serve as a 
distraction. After the girl had succumbed to the 
same horror as the man, he would not leave her for a 
few days; but it was at her own request that at last 
he undertook to force his way along the bed of the 
fresh-water stream, in search of new fruits and roots 
that should serve for food, and incidentally to dis- 
cover, maybe, the source of the stream. 

6 81 


82 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


“ It probably rises in that chain of hills that runs 
along the right of the Gorge and ends on the east or 
south-east of the Island/' said the man, speculating. 
“ But the vegetation on its banks will differ in some 
sort to that in the Gorge, which is dry except for dew 
and rain, or on the coasts. Are you sure you will be 
all right? I’ll take you with me if you like." 

“ No — I shall be all right. I've got some work 
to do, patching. If you will leave me your shirt I’ll 
see if I can cobble up that sleeve you tore yesterday," 
said the girl practically. 

“ Will you? " Trelawny looked ruefully at his tat- 
tered garment, which by now showed signs of yield- 
ing to the stress of weather and pioneering in the raw 
bush. “ Upon my word, Tommy, I don’t know what 
we are to do for clothes in a short time ! The — the 
Garden of Eden is being forced on us ! ” He laughed 
a little ruefully, suddenly remembering her sex. 

“ We can make shift with leaves or long grass, if 
necessary," said the girl shortly. “ You won’t feel 
the sun too hot ? ’’ 

“ Not under those bamboos by the stream — they 
shut it in mostly. I shan’t be gone long, either, only 
a few hours, I expect. I’m just going to explore to- 
day." 

“ All right," said the girl, turning back to the cave 
and her thorn needles, which were proving more satis- 
factory than the fish-bone. “ Don’t trouble about the 
fish — I’ll get some for supper." 

“ Oh, I shall be back in time for that," said the man 
lightly, and stripping his tattered, discoloured shirt 
he left himself the silk vest, which had suffered less, 
for his journey. His braces had not yet given way, 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 83 

and he was able to retain what was left of his 
trousers. But had it not been for the need of pro- 
tection to his northern skin, and the sex of his com- 
panion, he would rather have chosen to go naked as 
a South Sea Islander. Heat and expediency usually 
led him to the conviction that Nature did not intend 
man to inconvenience himself with clothing in the 
dense growths of the equator. 

The day, according to Trelawny’s record, was the 
31st of December, a week having passed since Christ- 
mas Day and Leslie’s madness. The girl set to her 
task somewhat laboriously, and threading her needles 
with the split fibre of some tough creeper, she began 
to make small punctures in the fabric of her own gar- 
ments to draw the improvised thread slowly in and 
out. It was tedious work, and disheartening, for 
though the fibre did not break it was too harsh and 
coarse for her purpose, and threatened to tear the rot- 
ten rags still more, nearly reducing Leslie to despair. 
Nevertheless, she stuck to her task with a dogged per- 
sistence that was perhaps due to her Scotch origin, 
and having finished her own more pressing need, be- 
gan to repair the torn sleeve of Trelawny’s shirt. By 
the time she had finished the sun was past the merid- 
ian, and it was the hour when human nature demanded 
sleep — the universal siesta of the middle of the trop- 
ical day. But though Leslie climbed into the inner 
cave, and threw herself down on her bed, clasping 
her hands under her head in the attitude most con- 
ducive to sleep for her, she felt restless and disin- 
clined to slumber. She did not expect Trelawny back 
for some hours yet, but she had a curious sense that 
he wanted her — almost that he was calling to her, 


84 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


and a gloomy premonition of disaster made the bright 
blaze of noon appear dull and shadowed. Once she 
got up and wandered a little way out on the cliff, but 
there was nothing tangible to see or hear, and the 
intense heat drove her back again. Then she really 
did fall into a feverish sleep, from which she awoke 
more certain than before that he was calling to her. 

Trelawny had found his task easier than he ex- 
pected. The banks of the stream were smothered 
with creepers and low-growing bush, it is true, and in 
some parts the bamboos which flourished there met 
overhead, making a dull twilight; but the stream was 
so shallow that where he could not gain a foothold 
on the banks he waded, and being without his linen 
shirt he really felt the heat less overpowering than on 
former excursions into the hills where he was less 
sheltered. To protect his skin from the crowds of 
insects that stung and irritated him he broke a big 
branch of wild mulberry, and armed with this, he 
forced his way steadily upstream, sometimes having 
to scramble over the great bamboos that had fallen 
across the water and were too large and heavy to be 
washed down. Trelawny was glad to see the. bam- 
boos, for though they grew in smaller clumps at the 
mouth of the Gorge, they were nothing like as fine or 
as numerous, and there is no wood that grows in the 
tropics which is so generally useful. This was a part 
of the little Island that, as it happened, he had not 
actually explored, though he knew the lie of the land 
from his vantage-point on the cliffs to the north-west. 

The stream narrowed and twisted, sometimes so 
full of deep holes that Trelawny judged it wisest to 
scramble up on the bank and follow its winding until 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON *85 

he reached a shallow where he could see the bottom, 
and the fish darted away under the banks at his ap- 
proach. Once it disappeared entirely underground, 
and he roamed about for fifty yards thinking he had 
traced it as far as he might, only to discover it again 
welling up under a group of large-leaved ficus. It 
was very beautiful even in the increasing heat of the 
tropical day, and he wished that he had brought Leslie. 

The bed of the stream was clay as far as he could 
judge, and th£ banks were the rich clay soil whence he 
had taken the material in which to cook his fish on 
his first arrival on the Island. But despite its prom- 
ising appearance he did not find the variety of plants 
that he had hoped, until he emerged rather suddenly 
into an open space at the foot of the range of hills 
lying between him and the Gorge, when he stood still 
and gave a sudden shout of discovery. For climbing 
up the rising land to his left, flourishing in the shelter 
of the range and the moisture of the clay, were a 
group of tall plantains, whether planted by man or 
indigenous to the soil he could not tell, but plantains 
without doubt and bearing fruit. What rice is to In- 
dia, and what wheat is to Europe, the plantain is to 
the South Pacific and Atlantic. It is veritably the 
stafif of life, and Trelawny recognized its ap- 
pearance in this wilderness as though it were manna 
from heaven. 

He clambered up to the broken ground on which it 
had propagated itself and taken hold, and found that 
the plantation was large enough to serve his turn and 
Leslie’s for many a day while he was carefully striking 
fresh suckers and waiting for them to bear. The 
broad, broken leaves seemed to him like friendly 


86 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


hands stretched out to him, and in his eagerness he 
hardly looked where he was going, and found him- 
self slipping back from the ledge he wished to reach 
into a bed of vegetation that might be many feet deep. 
To save himself he caught hold of a ficus, and then 
proceeded to climb by one of the “ monkey-ladders ” 
formed by a great creeper hanging pendant from its 
upper boughs. The creeper hung in straight lines, 
but Trelawny impatiently knotted two of its ropes 
together and set his foot on them. The knot had 
been carelessly tied in his hurry, and he felt it slip; 
he caught at another, twisting it round his arm, but it 
gave beneath his weight, and though it did not break 
it lowered him so swiftly that his foot slid off the 
resting-place it had found, and he caught at it instead 
with his hand — caught too successfully, for the 
swinging vine ran through his hands and jerked up 
short under his chin, catching his head in a noose as 
the slip-knot tightened, as neatly as if some enemy 
had planned it. 

For a minute he hung in air, his dangling feet fail- 
ing to find a foothold, his hands fighting madly to re- 
lease himself. It was a sickening struggle for life or 
death, for he was in danger of having his neck broken 
or being choked, the pressure from the wicked vine 
tendrils becoming almost unbearable. His hands 
clutched at the noose and tore it open, while he swung 
to and fro, gasping, and before his eyes the blue sky 
and the plantains bobbed up and down like a ghastly 
peep-show, as the last things, perhaps, that he might 
see in this world. Had he been asked a few minutes 
since if death had any terrors for him, castaway as he 
was with rescue growing more and more remote, he 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 87 

would have laughed at the idea; but the instinct of life 
was stronger than his philosophy, and he fought as 
for the dearest treasure that could be his. 

A moment more and he felt that the vines would 
have their way with him, for his muscles would no 
longer support the pressure of his dangling weight, 
which tightened the noose against all his efforts. He 
thrust madly with his feet in open space, dragged the 
vines apart with a last effort, and felt the whole 
creeper give way and fling him down into the sea of 
greenery beneath. As he fell he spun round and came 
down with a sickening thud that knocked the remain- 
ing breath out of him, for he had dropped into a deep 
hole concealed by the treacherous leaves of many 
small bushes. The branches and the tangle of green- 
ery broke the fall a little, however, and after a few 
minutes he was able to drag himself to his feet, only 
to discover that his ankle was badly wrenched if not 
broken. 

What a fool he had been! He cursed his own 
impatience, and shook his fist at the plantains, still 
waving green palms beyond his reach, and mocking 
him with the coveted fruit. There was no hope of 
clambering up there now, at any rate, and, indeed, he 
had a bad enough task before him to get home. He 
found that by leaning on the staff he always took 
with him when exploring the Island, he could manage 
to hobble; but it was a painful process, and he feared 
that his foot would get worse as he attempted to use 
it. There was nothing else to be done, however, for 
if he stayed where he was on the chance of the girl 
setting out to find him, he might be incapable of mov- 
ing at all as the joint stiffened, 


88 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


He had freed his neck from the tight-drawn vine 
and felt that his throat was for the moment more 
painful than his ankle. It was bruised and swollen, 
and to swallow was a difficulty, but he made a cup 
out of a ficus leaf and drank some water before he 
began his homeward journey. The healing water 
was twice his friend, and as he felt it running coolly 
round his legs he hoped that it might reduce the pain 
in his ankle; but every step was a torture, and his 
progress was necessarily slow. Once he stepped on a 
stone and turned faint and dizzy with the pain as his 
foot twisted afresh, and as time went on his throat 
appeared to get worse rather than better, and he 
found on trying that he could hardly speak. It was 
past midday when, after many halts, he emerged at 
last into the broad shallow which they called the 
drinking pool, and crawling along the bank looked 
with longing eyes to the haven of the beach, only a 
hundred yards or so away. He could barely move, 
and he could not call out, but he dragged his body 
somehow across the intervening space and was won- 
dering if he would ever reach the girl when he saw 

her come running to meet him. 

Leslie’s presentiment of evil had roused her finally 
about two o’clock, with the impression that Trelawny 
was calling out. She stood up, with the dream still 
in her eyes, looking vaguely round her, before she 
began to move mechanically in the direction from 
which she expected him to come. It was too early for 
him to get back, but — what was that object, stum- 
bling, crawling, seeming but half human, and by no 
means the man who had left her that morning walking 


the UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 89 


upright? For a minute she gazed, shivering, think- 
ing it some new terror approaching her from the 
bush, in his absence ; then with a little cry she dashed 
forward to meet him, and caught him in her arms 
almost as he fell at her feet. 

All the maternal instinct was alive in her as she 
wound her strong young arms round the failing, 
bruised figure, and supported him the few yards to 
the cave — more so than when she had found him, 
raving, on the northern cliffs, for then at least he 
could help himself. She saw the discoloured marks 
on the swollen throat, and bruises about his body of 
which he was himself unconscious, and she uttered 
little lovely mother sounds, unknowing that she did 
so, as though over a sick child. He was past speech, 
but he pointed to his throat and she understood — to 
his ankle, and she helped him on to his rough bed, and 
proceeded to tend him. 

The relief of the recumbent attitude must have 
made him swoon again, he thought, for when he next 
opened his eyes he was aware of a most delicious 
coolness on his throat and ankle, and of an unusually 
soft pillow. Then he found that she had brought her 
own bedding of dried grass and fern and heaped it 
under his head and shoulders, lifting him inch by inch 
to move his dead weight from the harsher weed, while 
his throat and ankle were ingeniously poulticed with a 
compress of wet grass bound round with a piece of 
creeper such as had wrought his disaster. The grass 
bandage was fresh pulled from the cliff and soaked in 
water, being covered with broad leaves, while the girl 
sat at his side with a gourd full, renewing the moisture 


90 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


as soon as it showed signs of getting dry. The cold 
compress had already so far reduced the swelling that 
he could speak in a husky whisper. 

“ Got caught in a vine,” he gasped hoarsely. 
“ Nearly hanged. I was going after ” 

“ Yes, all right!” she interrupted soothingly. 
“ Don’t talk! Can you swallow? I want to feed 
you.” 

“ Oh, yes — I’m hungry. But I must tell 

you ” he half raised himself in his eagerness, 

but his bruised body hurt him, and his brow con- 
tracted. 

The girl put her arm under the muscular shoulders 
again, and supported him. She heard his sigh of 
relief as he rested against her. “ Now what do you 
want to say?” she asked, with the indulgence of a 
mother to a restless child. 

“ I found plantains — do you understand ? Plan- 
tains! on my soul I did ! ” 

“That’s good!” She knew the value of the plan- 
tain also, but in her heart she thought the discovery 
weighed little against his injuries and the risk he 
must have run. She shuddered a little as* he gasped 
out his story to her, seeming to think nothing of it 
now the worst was over, and he could go back any 
time and get the blessed fruit. 

“ The worst of it is I’m tied here for some time, 
I’m afraid. What did you think of my foot? Is it 
much swollen ? ” 

“ A good deal — but I don’t think any bones are 
broken, or you couldn't have got home! Never mind 
— I’ll keep the wet grass on it, and you’ll be about 
again in a little while,” 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


9i 


“ You'll have to do the hunting, I’m afraid,” he 
said with a weak laugh. “ I can’t even help you to 
cook, laid here on my back ! ” 

“ I’ll do it — don’t be afraid. We won’t either of 
us starve. Why, I feel able to do all your work and 
mine too. Look how strong I am ! ” 

She got up to reassure him, and stood before him 
in the golden light of the afternoon, a strange ragged 
figure, light and boyish, and yet instinct with life and 
strength, as she said. He looked up at her, and 
seemed to see something he had not expected, and 
that left him a little surprised. Perhaps it prompted 
his next words, half unconsciously. 

“ Did you manage to mend my sleeve? ” 

“ Yes. Would you be more comfortable with your 
shirt on? I can easily slip it over your head.” 

“ I think I should. If you’ll help me to sit up I’ll 
get into it.” 

She fetched the shirt, which, besides mending, she 
had wrung out in fresh water and bleached it in the 
sun, so that it looked a more respectable garment, 
and she helped him into it with some pride. Then 
she was going to feed him with some bread-fruit 
which she had baked for her midday meal and kept 
hot in the ashes, but to her amazement he made an- 
other demand first in spite of his avowed hunger. 

“ I should like to bathe my face and hands, if you 
don’t mind,” he said, still in that unnatural voice, 
and she hastened to bring the largest calabash filled 
with fresh water, and some giant leaves which she 
herself had made shift as towels, even finding that 
when bruised they softened and cooled her skin from 
sunburn. Then she renewed the wet compresses, 


9 2 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

urging him to lie down again lest his shirt should get 
wet. 

“ I wish I could cut my hair somehow,” he said 
discontentedly, pushing the straggling locks behind 
his ears. “ I feel like a beastly aesthetic poet ! ” 

She laughed a little, her amused eyes taking in the 
half-grown beard and the unkempt locks which were 
certainly very unsoldierlike. There seemed hardly 
any resemblance between the wild head and ragged 
figure at her feet, and the receding vision in her mind 
of Major Trelawny on board the Aristo — the 
smartest man on board, whom she had secretly longed 
to know, and grudgingly told herself that he was not 
worth knowing. Fate had laid the object of her jeal- 
ous envy low before her, and taken away all the out- 
ward show that had attracted her. Though she did 
not yet know it, it was her turn to-day. 

“ I once saw a man singe his hair to keep it short,” 
she said. “ It was up in the Bush, in Northern 
Queensland. He set the ends alight, and then patted 
them out with his hands ! ” 

“ By Jove ! that’s not a bad idea. I am afraid it’s 
grown too long, though.” 

“ And you have no idea how it smells ! I could not 
come near you for a week.” 

“ I should not like that ! ” he said involuntarily, 
and then looked up with his quick blue eyes as if he 
had betrayed himself. But the girl referred it to 
their usual fear of solitude, and her eyes were only 
rather kind as they met his. 

“ I can’t leave you while you are laid up like this, 
so please don’t set your head alight yet awhile ! ” she 
said good-humouredly. “ I’ll make up the fire to 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


93 


save relighting it, and as soon as it gets dark I will 
go and fetch some fish for supper. Here’s your 
bread-fruit.” 

He lay back comfortably on the soft bed of hay 
and fern, and munched the food, watching her with a 
curious awakening look as she went to and fro, mend- 
ing the fire. Later on she went off with the net to the 
rock pools, but he could still just see her from where 
he lay by the light that she carried to attract the fish 
— an active figure, untrammelled by corsets or shoes, 
and moving in consequence as easily as one of the 
natives of Mauritius. He had often declared that 
these black women had the most perfect carriage he 
had ever known; now it dawned on him that a white 
woman can regain something of the same advantage 
with the abandonment of her heels and stays. 

When she came back from her fishing, triumphant, 
he still watched her, moving about the fire, cleaning 
the fish, and preparing the evening meal. She was as 
perfectly unconscious of his scrutiny as she was of the 
fact that a new health and strength made the doing 
of every task an enjoyment instead of a weariness to 
the flesh. 

“ Look ! I got one mullet and a parrot fish ! ” she 
said, holding them up ready spitted for toasting be- 
fore the wood blaze. “I know the parrot-fish isn’t 
good eating, but beggars mustn’t be choosers ! ” There 
was something almost provocative in the flash of her 
brown eyes. 

“ I think you have grown taller since we came to the 
Island,” was his irrelevant answer. “ Or else you 
carry yourself better. How old are you? 

“ Twenty-one — I’ve done growing,” she answered 


94 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


a trifle shortly, for the steady gaze with which he 
favoured her began to make her restive. 

“ You look less like a girl and more like a woman, 
anyhow.” 

“ Don’t talk — it’s bad for your voice,” said Leslie 
laconically, and turned away to her cooking, rather 
glad of the excuse. She was suddenly hotly aware 
of the ragged shirt over her white breast, and the in- 
creasing emphasis of her figure. For he was right, 
and she knew it; the lines of her bosom had filled out, 
and her untrammelled waist and hips were not so flat 
and boyish as they had been two months since. She 
wondered if her scanty clothes made her indecent, 
and if that was what he meant, and her eyes filled with 
angry tears at her helplessness to hide herself more 
successfully. There was an added brusqueness in her 
manner when she brought him his supper, but the 
instinct of succour forced her to offer her arm to 
raise him as before — and besides, and in such a posi- 
tion he could not look at her with those embarrassing 
eyes. 

“ I have forgotten your name again,” he said un- 
expectedly, as he broke the fish with the wooden fork. 
She was kneeling beside him to afford him support 
that he might not move his ankle, and he could see 
the half-angry flush on her face. 

“ It is Leslie Mackelt — but it does not matter.” 

“Yes, it does — I have been calling you Tommy 
all along.” 

“Well, I don’t care. And besides, as there are 
only two of us there is no need to use any names at 
all!” 

“ I think there is a good deal of need while I am 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 95 

laid tip like this! How am I to call you when I want 
you ? Are you like the gentleman in the 4 Hunting 
of the Snark ’ — 

“ He would answer to Hi ! 

Or to any loud cry — 

Such as Fry me! or Fritter my wig!” 

“ I have never read the * Hunting of the Shark ’ ! ” 

“ Snark — not shark,” he corrected. “ I shall evi- 
dently have to finish your education ! ” 

This was a stab in a vulnerable point. “ I have 
read as much or more than you — things that were 
worth reading ! ” she said hotly. 

“ So you have ! It was ungrateful of me, consider- 
ing how you spouted that night I was — I was ill.” 
He stammered even now over the mention of the 
Solitude-Madness. “ Will you do it for me again to- 
night?” 

“If it will prevent your talking,” said the girl 
curtly. He took the hint this time, or else the 
eating of his supper kept him quiet, for he spoke no 
more until, her own supper ended and the utensils 
carefully put away, she came and sat down by his 
side again, in the darkness of the cave. 

“ Don’t sit there — I can’t see you,” he objected. 
“ Come round on the other side, and face me.” 

" I don’t want to be seen,” said the girl, almost 
rudely. “ We are neither of us pretty objects to look 
at, you and I.” 

“ I don’t agree with you,” he said, no less emphati- 
cally for his hoarseness. “ At least, I can’t speak for 
myself, having no glass — I’ve no doubt I am hideous 
enough. But you at least are a picturesque savage 
maiden ! ” 


96 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

The girl coloured again in the darkness, as much 
from* surprise as any pleasure that his assurance gave 
her. She was suspicious of this new mood of his, and 
thought he was ridiculing her, and the thought made 
her furious. If he had not been so really helpless she 
would have sprung up and rushed away into the dark- 
ness to rave and storm to herself over the heartless- 
ness of this remnant of a “ fine gentleman ” under all 
his rags; but common humanity kept her at his side, 
and she relapsed into sullen silence, drawing herself 
however a little further into the shadow, and away 
from him. 

“Are you there ?” he asked after a minute, trying 
to turn his head, and desisting with an expression of 
pain that brought the girl to his assistance again like 
a flash of lightning. 

“ What is it ? Why do you try to move ? ” she 
scolded him ; but she slipped her arm under his shoul- 
ders again and raised him as gently as if he were a 
baby. 

“ I thought you had gone away — I was afraid I 
had made you cross,” he whispered as if his voice 
were exhausted. 

“ No,” said the girl grudgingly, “ I won't leave you 
— but you ought to go to sleep now. I’ll — I'll 
‘spout' if you like!” She used the depreciatory 
word a trifle resentfully. 

“ Yes, do. Say that thing about the Wind of the 
Western Sea — will you? And do sit where I can see 
you ! ” 

She looked down curiously at his head resting 
against her shoulder. In spite of the ragged beard 
and hair he was not the hideous object he had sug- 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


97 

gested, and there was unconscious coaxing in his eyes 
— the faint reflection of a manner that belonged to 
the lost life of civilization. It was too strange to 
Leslie for her to classify it; she had no experience of 
such men as Trelawny and the assurance that means 
social success. 

“Why!” she said slowly, “did you hear that f I 
thought you were asleep ! ” 

“ No — I was watching you.” 

He remembered that wonderful look on her face 
that had half awed him on the night in question, and 
hoped to see it again. But when she had heaped the 
dried grass more comfortably under his head, and 
renewed the wet bandages, she disappointed him by 
sitting down in the darkness again, behind his pillow, 
and only her voice guided him to picture the maternity 
growing in her eyes — that soft voice that forgot to 
be cross when she repeated her favourite poems, and 
that he never found monotonous for all its lack of 
training and elocution. There was no moon to light 
up the two figures, but the stars burned and shook 
all down the velvet heavens to the horizon, and hung 
so low out of the sky that it seemed as if they quivered 
with desire to reach the earth. 

“ Sweet and low, sweet and low, 

Wind of the western sea ! ” 

The man stretched his hand out in the darkness with 
an instinctive movement, as if asking or offering sym- 
pathy. Perhaps it was too dark to see, or perhaps 
the girl did not care to respond ; for the groping fin- 
gers met with nothing but empty air. He waited till 
the last sweet words of the poem dropped into silence, 
7 


98 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

and then he spoke again, with a subtlety she did not 
gauge. 

“ Leslie, did you remember to mark up the date? ” 

“ Oh, I am sorry!” said the girl remorsefully, 
shrinking back into her old sense of a neglected duty. 
“ I forgot — and I’m afraid it’s too late to see now ! ” 

“ Never mind — IT1 remind you to-morrow. We 
shan’t forget either — it’s December 31st.” 

“ The last day of the year ! ” 

“ Let’s make a compact to be better friends, and not 
rag each other, and — and all that sort of thing, shall 
we? We ought to make good resolutions for the New 
Year, you know ! ” 

“ Yes,” said the girl, and by her voice it was evi- 
dent that she was softened again. “ I know I’m ill- 
tempered ” 

“ And I’m rough with you. It’s six of one and half 
a dozen of the other, eh? Well, there’s enough to 
try us in this life ! ” 

She did not answer, and after a minute he said, 
“ Will you shake hands on it ? ” 

Then she leaned towards him, and at last put her 
hand into his. The two palms felt strange and hard 
in each other, roughened with work and coarsened 
with salt water. But their grip was honest, and for 
a minute the man’s did not relax, but held her pris- 
oner. 

“ Do you know that that’s the first time we’ve 
shaken hands? ” he said, as if it struck him as a little 
remarkable. 

The girl pulled her hand away. “ Good night ! ” 
she said abruptly. 


CHAPTER VIII 


“ Sir, get you something of our purity, 

And we will of your strength : we ask no more. 

That is the sum of what seek we.” — George Meredith. 

UT ESLIE! ” 

-L/ “Well?” 

“ Haven’t you finished pottering round that old fish 
of yours yet? ” 

“ No, I haven’t. And if you want any supper you 
had better not hinder me ! ” 

The words were called from a little distance, where 
the girl knelt at her evening task, for Trelawny still 
lay in the mouth of the cave on his couch of dried 
grass and fern, though he was propped up in a semi- 
recumbent position. His throat showed nothing now 
but a faint discoloration, but his ankle was still 
stretched out before him, and carefully bound up in 
its strange dressing of grass and leaves. The swell- 
ing had gone down, but he was afraid to trust his 
full weight on it, and could only crawl about, or hobble 
on a stick with Leslie’s assistance. 

She brought his food to him after a few minutes, 
and sat down with her own beside him. 

“ Do come and talk to me,” he grumbled, as soon 
as the gourds were empty, and she showed signs of 
returning to her work of clearing up. “ You don’t 
know how tedious it is sitting here doing nothing.” 

“ I’m coming in a minute ” Her voice van- 

59 


IOO THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


ished into the darkness of the cave, but she reappeared 
almost immediately and dropped on to the seaweed 
at his side, her hands clasping her knees. “ I re- 
membered the date just in time ! ” she said breath- 
lessly. 

“ Good girl ! What is it now ? ” 

“ The seventh of January.” 

“ And I’ve been laid up a week ! ” he groaned. “ I 
must begin to use this beastly foot soon.” 

“ Don’t be in a hurry,” pleaded the girl anxiously. 
“ If you did it permanent harm it would hamper you 
so! ” 

“ That’s true, I suppose.” But he sighed wearily 
and glanced at his bandaged foot as if he bore it a 
personal grudge. “ I should like to tear down every 
vine and creeper in this brutal hole, and burn it ! ” 

“ Yes, and then we should have nothing to make 
nets of, or thread, or half a dozen other things ! The 
vines have been more useful to us than the bark or 
cocoanut fibre. You’ll have to practise patience this 
time. That’s a woman’s quality.” 

“ Well, but women have so many occupations they 
can do sitting still,” he protested. “ Men never learn 
them as long as they are active. I tried to go on 
with that mat of yours to-day, and only bungled it. 
It seems to come naturally to you. I don’t believe 
women are any more patient than men, really.” 

She did not see the argumentative trap, and fell 
into it. “ We’ve got to be as a rule,” she said a trifle 
bitterly. “ If a man doesn’t like a thing he just goes 
off and changes his life; but a woman has to stop 
where she is and endure it.” 

“ Now I wonder what experience made you say 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON ioi 

that!” said Treiawny kindly, with a half-quizzical 
look at the sunburnt face before him under the thick 
dark hair. There was health and strength and vigour 
now in the girl, in place of the sallow anaemia of her 
first appearance; but he was never misled into think- 
ing her like a boy. It struck him as ludicrous that he 
should have forgotten her sex and called her Tommy 
for so long. 

“ I was thinking of my brothers,” she confessed, a 
little shamefacedly. “ It was all very well for them 
to be good — they were living just the life that they 
wanted, and doing the things that interested them, 
I had to stay at home and be good, hating every day, 
and never getting what I wanted ! ” 

“And were you good?” asked Treiawny, with a 
twinkle in his eyes. 

“ Oh, yes, I was good ! ” She tossed her dark 
mane with a little consciousness of virtue. “ I neve? 
wasted my time in frivolous things, and I worked 

hard at my education, and I went to Meeting ” 

He burst out laughing, and her face flamed. He 
was always offending and humiliating her, and, if she 
had but known it, educating her as she had never been 
for all her book-learning. 

“ But, my dear child,” he said more soberly, “ that 
isn’t being good. What possible advantage to you 
was it to go to chapel if you hated it? ” 

The beautiful glow in her face deepened still more, 
as her head drooped a little. She looked down at the 
sand which she was idly running through her fingers, 
rather than at him. “ It was all so unlovely ! ” she 
muttered, like a rebellious child. “ I can read the 
Bible, and love it. but I don’t like the prayers they 


102 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


gabble out — I don’t! — I don’t! And if you 

ever do make yourself feel good, and seem to get 
right away into spiritual things, then there’s all that 
chattering and gossiping and talking before one goes 
home, as if it were a tea-party in chapel itself! ” 

Trelawny had never attended a Methodist service, 
and could hardly appreciate the mental picture in the 
girl’s mind — the inevitable reunion after “ Meeting,” 
which to chapel people is really the event of the week. 
It was the aesthetic sense in her as much as the re- 
ligious that was outraged by the little commonplaces 
of the conversation, and the titbits of local interest 
passing between her aunt and her neighbours in the 
chapel building itself ; for the outward and visible sign 
meant as much to Leslie as the inward and spiritual 
grace. 

It was her misfortune that Roman Catholicism or 
Mohammedanism were the needs of her nature rather 
than the extreme simplicity of the Methodists; and 
while she flattered herself that she was more religious 
than the community to which she belonged, she was 
only incapable of realizing their placid habit of com- 
bining their worship with daily life. What Trelawny 
did see was that the girl had been a fish out of water 
whatever her circumstances, and he was good-hu- 
mouredly sorry for her. 

“ Well, it sounds a cheerful way of going to church, 
any way ! ” he said amusedly. “ What are you ? 
Nonconformist? ” 

“ My aunt was a Primitive Methodist ” 

Leslie hesitated. “ My brothers were members of the 
Free Church of Scotland, and I just went with either 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 103 

one or the other, as I happened to be in England or 
Scotland.” 

“ But that was very immoral of you! It seems to 
me you were all things to all men, and bowed in the 
House of Rimmon and all the rest of it ! ” 

“ Well, that’s better than not going to service at all 
— as I suppose you did ! ” she burst out, fiery under 
his teasing as usual. 

“ I don’t see that at all. If you don’t believe in a 
certain form of religion, it’s hypocritical to attend its 
services and pretend that you do ! ” 

“ But — but — ” she stammered, hampered with all 
the teaching of her little life, “ it’s wrong not to go to 
meeting — to some church or chapel, anyway ! ” 

“ My dear child, it’s much more wrong to insult 
God by lying! ” 

She stared at him helplessly, her eyes almost full of 
angry tears. He was tearing the solid ground from 
under her feet by such a doctrine; yet her honesty 
told her that he had probed down to the root of the 
wound. She had lied, every time that she had gone 
to chapel with rebellion in her heart, and subscribed 
to a service on which she inwardly threw scorn. If 
she had even sucked the sweetness out of it for her- 
self and rejected the dried husk of mere dogma, she 
would not have harmed her soul; but she had obsti- 
nately looked for the things that irritated her, and 
taken her stand on the ground of her own repulsion. 

“ Look here,” said Trelawny kindly, “ it seems to 
me that your view of life, and religion, and every- 
thing else, is all wrong. You’ve got to live and let 
live in this world. It’s no good mounting all your 


104 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

convictions on steel rods that won’t accommodate 
themselves to circumstances. You’ll only make your- 
self miserable if you do, and you’ll get some awfully 
hard knocks before you find that every one doesn’t 
think alike.” 

“ But if a thing is wrong, it’s wrong,” insisted the 
girl, clinging to her last defence. “ You can’t make 
wrong right.” 

“ No, you can’t. But you are not the supreme 
judge of Wrong and Right, are you?” 

“ I don’t see what you mean ” 

“Well, it’s no good your trying to impose your 
standard on the whole world, is it? You think cer- 
tain things are wrong and right because you’ve been 
taught that way; but you’ve never even tried to prove 
them for yourself, have you ? ” 

“ I couldn’t do wrong to try and find out if it were 
wrong ! ” 

“ No, I hope you couldn’t,” he assented quietly. 
“ But when you see other people doing what you con- 
sider wrong you might try and look at it from their 
point of view, and remember their circumstances — 
oh, and a thousand things you can’t know about them. 
I’m not arguing about legal crimes, such as murder 
and theft — we’re all agreed that those must be pun- 
ished because they’re bad for the community. But 
when it’s a question of moral choice you have no right 
to condemn on your own standard.” 

She looked at him and gasped. “ But it’s in the 
Bible ! ” she said feebly. “ I mean, we have our au- 
thority there.” 

“ Very well, then stick to the authority of the Bible 
for your line of conduct, if you believe in it — I should 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 105 

keep to the New Testament rather than the Old, if I 
were you, for charity’s sake! But do remember that 
for the Mohammedan there is the Koran, and for the 
Jews the Talmud, and for the Bhuddists the Pati- 
mokkha. You have no right to condemn any of them 
so long as they honestly believe in their creeds, and 
not in yours. They think they are doing right as 
much as you do.” 

“ But they are heathens — my brothers are mission- 
aries and go out to convert them ! ” said the girl con- 
fusedly, and certainly incorrectly. 

“ I dare say they do,” retorted Trelawny dryly (he 
had seen something of mission work), “though I 
rather doubt the conversions. However, as long as 
they are honest in purpose and belief I have no doubt 
they are good men doing a good work. All I want 
you to remember is that until these people are con- 
verted, they are just as earnest as you in pursuing 
their own line of conduct — probably more so, con- 
sidering what you have told me of your liking for the 
Methodist religion ! ” 

Leslie was silent, trying to straighten the turmoil 
in her mind. She had often rebelled against certain 
tenets of her teaching, but she had never argued 
about them because such argument would have been 
described as iniquity in itself by those who had trained 
and taught her. Trelawny’s views were so bluntly 
sane that she found it difficult to confute them on the 
spur of the moment. Of course he was a worldling, 
and his thesis was specious and untenable; but she 
found that she lacked words to explain this to him. 
Her face was not sullen however, it was only troubled 
and thoughtful; and after a shrewd look at her he left 


io6 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


her to digest the new doctrine, and changed the con- 
versation to another subject. 

“ I’ve been thinking that we’ve never really been all 
round the coast of our domain,” he said, with a faintly 
bitter sigh at the designation. “ I’ve actually been 
down to the shore on the west, north, and east, but 
I’ve only an idea of the south coast after all. When 
I can get about again, suppose we try to push through 
the scrub beyond the beacon ? ” 

“ But you can see from the northern cliffs that it is 
‘only bush right down to the water, ,f objected Leslie 
with slight uneasiness. She had a secret fear of pene- 
trating into the bush since Trelawny’s accident. “We 
had far better follow the track you have already ex- 
plored up the bed of the stream, and get the plantains. 
I shall come too, of course,” she added hastily. 

“ So we will, and we’ll go together. We always 
seem to get into mischief when we’re apart, eh?” 
He laughed a little, and made a tentative motion to- 
wards her, as if he would hold out his hand. But 
Leslie’s brown eyes were gazing steadily seaward, and 
it appeared that she did not see. He drew back as if 
slightly rebuffed, and his voice was more decided and 
crisper when he next spoke. 

“ Anyhow, we ought to know all we can about the 
Island. I tried to get round to the south-east once 
when I went straight through the Gorge. The cliffs 
are very high and quite unapproachable from the sea 
for a long way, and then on the south they give way 
to vegetation.” 

“What did you find?” * 

“ I found a mangrove swamp, and struck inland 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 107 

again. But I have not tried it from the south-west, 
though it is nearer, because of the bush.” 

“ I don’t suppose we shall find anything but 
swamp,” said the girl despondently. “ But we’ll go if 
you like.” 

“ Mangrove is not bad timber,” remarked Trelawny 
thoughtfully ; “ they used to use it a lot in Mauritius. 
If I wanted to run up a hut I’d as soon use that as 
anything — only I haven’t a means of chopping it 
down.” 

“ The caves do well enough,” said Leslie consol- 
ingly. She was certainly growing more womanly in 
her instinct to soothe and encourage her companion, 
instead of giving way to the discontent and despair 
of her mental attitude when she first found herself a 
castaway. “ We were very lucky to find shelter.” 

“ We were very lucky to find anything, situated as 
we were! In every instance of a shipwrecked mar- 
iner I ever heard of, the poor wretch had at least the 
nucleus of a boat to build with, and a hatchet that 
served him for an axe. Our stock-in-trade consisted 
of a small pen-knife and my broken field-glasses! ” 

They looked at each other, and to their own sur- 
prise they laughed. It seemed impossible that their 
tragedy should become a comedy; yet the wonderful 
magicians called Youth and Health are capable of 
strange transformations. Something in the life-giv- 
ing air of the Island had gradually, and unknown to 
them, been revivifying their bodies so that they were 
dowered with a new hope and strength, and the gloom 
and horror refused to stay in their minds. Trelawny 
had seen the visible results in the girl’s face and figure ; 


io8 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


but they neither of them recognized its inevitable 
reaction upon their spirits. 

“ We know very little about each other even now, 
do we ? ” said the man amicably, clasping his hands 
behind his roughened head, and looking contentedly 
at his companion as she sat beside him, still running 
the sand through her fingers in that restless fashion, 
as if the new life in her demanded movement of some 
sort even though she were resting. “ Suppose we give 
each other a general confession? Come — Fll start 
the cross-examination.” 

“ All right,” she said laconically. She did not look 
at him, and he wondered why the sand suddenly ran 
faster through the busy fingers. In her heart the girl 
was subtly excited, as at the stolen revel of a novel 
— for reading novels, save a staid and standard qual- 
ity, had been forbidden her at home. She suspected 
that there would be a fearful interest in Trelawny’s 
experiences if she could only persuade him to tell her 
real truths of life. Of course she must condemn 
them — but she longed to hear. 

“ You’re twenty-one, aren’t you, and you have 
brothers who are missionaries — that’s about all I 
know,” he said lazily. “ How many brothers were 
there?” 

“ Three — but Alec, the youngest, died last year in 
Uganda.” 

“ A missionary too? ” 

“ Yes.” She spoke a trifle resentfully. There 
was something in his tone that roused a spirit of de- 
fiance in her, from loyalty if nothing else. “ Robert, 
the eldest, is a minister in Fifeshire, but he is going 
to Africa next year, I think. And Donald and I have 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 109 

been in Queensland. We are going on to North- 
West Australia — to the aboriginals. We got as far 
as Port Darwin, but there we had to turn back.” 

“ What made him take a girl on such an expedi- 
tion!” said Trelawny wonderingly. “It must be 
rough enough for a man ! ” 

“ It was when Aunt Minnie died,” the girl ex- 
plained, still with a faint reluctance in her tone. “ I 
had always lived with her, at Edgbaston, near Bir- 
mingham, you know. And I had never been 
strong ” 

“ An excellent reason for taking you to the * never 
never ’ country, and putting you through hardships 
that have killed pioneers ! ” 

“ David thought the sea-voyage would be good for 
me, and he wanted a woman to help him ” — she 
thrust the explanation at him hotly, as if some traitor 
in herself were in danger of agreeing to his common- 
sense. “ He wasn’t married — — ” 

“ Yes, but to take a girl — a mere child — and a 
delicate one at that, into such a life! Why, you were 
all amongst the mining camps ! ” The man’s chivalry 
was up in arms, and the girl’s heart gave a little re- 
sponsive throb. She was ashamed to feel the tears 
pricking in her eyes, and bent her head still more to 
hide them. It was the suggested protection of his 
attitude, however, that prompted her next wistful 
question : 

“ Have you any sisters ? ” 

“ Two, both married. We’ll come to them pres- 
ently. I want to know about you first.” 

She sighed a little, thinking what a wonderful time 
a girl would have with a brother like Miles Trelawny 


no THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


— and then hated herself for the disloyalty. He was 
a worldling, who openly decried religion, and her 
brothers were good men, devoted to a cause so high 
that it had thrown her back on her own shortcomings 
in despair. 

“ I wasn’t much use in Australia,” she said hon- 
estly, feeling the humiliation of the confession as he 
could not guess. “ I was always being ill, and I 
couldn’t do much teaching, or get the women to talk 
to me. I was afraid of them — particularly in the 
mining camps,” — her truthfulness flared up like a 
torch, and her voice shook with sudden passion — 
“ and I hated the whole life! I even longed to be 
back at Edgbaston, though I had hated that at the 
time ” 

“ Poor little soul ! you do seem to have had a rough 
time!” he said kindly. The young, stunted life; 
fenced in with dreary religion, and denied all natural 
outlets in the name of God — as he shrewdly sus- 
pected — struck him as pitiful. With a growing gen- 
erosity, partly due to a new interest, it is true, he 
forgave Leslie Mackelt all her faults and shortcom- 
ings on account of that brief outline of her history. 
She had never had a chance, in his good-humoured 
masculine phrase, and he would have liked to make 
it up to her in the simplest and most material way. 
What did actually pass through his mind indeed was 
that she ought to have a good time in London, and 
to go to theatres and dances and have pretty frocks 
and much attention — just to make it up to her, and 
to develop the cramped impulses of her feminine na- 
ture — and the ludicrous side of such an aspiration on 
a desert island did not occur to him. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON in 

“Well, what brought you home again? ” he asked. 
“ Was it your health? ” 

“ Oh, no ! ” she said, rather surprised that such an 
unimportant detail should be supposed to interfere 
with Donald’s high calling. “ We were coming home 
because we had some money left to us, and Donald 
had to arrange about it with Robert. We decided to 
come right round and home by Vancouver, because the 
property was in Canada and we had to see some law- 
yers there.” 

“ Some money left you!” said Trelawny, catching 
at the practical suggestion. “ Come ! that’s the first 
cheerful thing that seems to have happened to you. 
I hope you shared with your brothers ? ” 

“ Oh, yes — we all inherited alike. It was a great 
deal of money, and needed a lot of arrangement, 
otherwise I don’t think we should have troubled to 
come home.” 

“A fortune!” said Trelawny gaily, wondering 
what a few thousands would constitute “ a great deal 
of money ” to the narrow, frugal Scotchmen and their 
strait-laced sister. “ And are you an heiress ? ” 

“ It comes from the Mackelt Railways in Canada,” 
said Leslie simply. “ I dare say you have heard of 
them — Donald Mackelt was our uncle, and he died 
unmarried. It all comes to us.” 

For a minute Trelawny stared at her in blank 
silence, trying to realize what she had said. The sen- 
sation of the financial world three or four months 
since had been the demise of the great railway mag- 
nate of North-East Canada, and the discovery of his 
right to innumerable millions. That one man could 
have had such vast interests and so much money, 


1 12 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


without his being bracketed with Rockefeller and 
Pierpoint Morgan, had seemed incredible to the money- 
making world; but the grim old Scotchman had kept 
the secret of his possessions till his death, and only 
the published figures had informed the public of 
the results of a lifetime of industry and financial 
genius. 

“Do you mean the Mackelt millions ?” said Tre- 
lawny slowly. 

“ Yes.” 

“ Is it possible ! ” 

“ Yes, really. Donald Mackelt was our uncle, and 
he left it to us.” She seemed to feel that his in- 
credulity was quite pardonable, and to find a difficulty 
in proving her assertion. “Of course my brothers 
felt how much this would mean to their calling, and 
how greatly it would help the work, and therefore 
they were not neglecting it, even though we had to 
give it up for a time and go home. Donald hoped to 
be out again next year, anyway.” 

“ Do you mean that he meant to devote his whole 
fortune to mission work?” 

“ Oh, yes, I think so.” 

Trelawny relapsed into discomforted silence for a 
minute or two. Something of the Temptation in the 
Wilderness, with all the treasures of the world spread 
at the feet of the typical Man, was suggested to his 
mind by the analogy of this fanatical young mission- 
ary and the Mackelt millions. The brother who 
would not spare his own sister to his work was not 
likely to reserve his own wealth; but Trelawny was 
irritatingly conscious that though he ought to admire 
the devotion, it struck him as fanatical still. Another 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 113 

thought occurred to him, to make the situation still 
more interesting. 

“ Had your brother made a will since he came into 
this money ? ” 

“ No, I don’t think so — no, I am sure he had not, 
because, you see, we really did not know how much 
it was. We were going home to talk it over with 
Robert, and then Donald said that even I must make 
a will, as I am of age.” 

Trelawny thought of the strange happening that 
had brought him and Leslie Mackelt to the Island, 
and the unknown fate of the Aristo. Supposing 
the force that had hurled them on to this lonely shore 
had doomed the ship, and that Donald Mackelt was 
no longer among living men, the enormous wealth 
would be still further divided between the surviving 
brother Robert and the little ragged figure at his side 
— a curious thing to think of since there seemed 
every possibility of her living and dying a castaway, 
while her millions awaited her beyond her grasp. 
But he would not put such ideas into her head — for 
the death of her brother would be a new trouble if he 
suggested it — and so he spoke still more cheerfully 
to distract her from such a contingency. 

“ Well, at. all events you are not bound to support 
a mission with your fortune, I suppose. You meant 
to have a good time at last like other girls, didn’t 
you ? ” 

But she turned her head away dully, and somewhat 
to his surprise. 

“ I don’t know. I expect I should have done as 
they advised.” 

“ Your brothers? But surely you were not bound 

8 


114 THE unofficial honeymoon 

by their convictions — particularly if you had no spe- 
cial zest for missions yourself! ” 

“ That was just why ” The sand ran through 

the little fingers faster and faster, and she turned to 
him at last with her breast rising and falling and the 
words tumbling over each other in her passion. “ I 
didn’t want to give it all to God ! — I know it’s right 
— I know I’m wrong — but I have lain awake at 
nights — up in the bush — and bitten my lips till the 
blood came ! I wanted to do as I liked with it — to 
do wicked things if I liked — anything, so that I had 
my own way for once. You can’t understand — 
you’ve always been free — no one would think it 
wrong for you. And yet even that wouldn’t make it 
right. But don’t think I’m good — don’t think I want 
to devote myself or anything I have to Christianity — 
I’m bad, bad all through, when I think of it. And 

yet I should have to ” 

Her voice trailed away into the old despondence, 
and the old sullenness came back into her face. 

Ludicrous as her outcry was in some of its expres- 
sions, he did not want to laugh. She might be nearly 
inarticulate in her struggle to show him her inner 
mind, but what struck him more was the astounding 
simplicity of her point of view. It was Right to de- 
vote a life and fortune to what had been taught her 
was a great cause; it was Wrong to push duty on one 
side and satisfy the natural craving for the good 
things of this world, because that was self-indulgence. 
Well, so it was. In theory he could not deny that the 
ethics of her point of view were quite in order — ac- 
knowledging oneself as a unit of Christianity; in prac- 
tice he was aware that ninety-nine persons out of a 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 115 

hundred would evade the obligation, translate the 
teaching of their religion in a more lenient manner, or 
refuse flatly to deny themselves and take up such a 
cross — himself among the number. 

Furthermore, there was a purity of outlook in Les- 
lie Mackelt, however narrow he might consider her 
training, that confused him, man of the world though 
he was. He was conscious that almost any one, cer- 
tainly he himself, would have raged at fortune all the 
more for casting him here, out of the world, just as he 
had become possessed of the power to enjoy the world. 
Even to one auditor he would have spoken of his own 
importance as the possessor of millions, and while on 
shipboard the pleasant celebrity of such wealth would 
certainly have hung about him. But no one had 
known anything of the Mackelts’ claim to attention; 
and Leslie had never spoken of her fortune — appar- 
ently never thought specially of it — since they had 
been together, until it emerged from the train of cir- 
cumstances in her brief history. Such a lack of 
earthly pride no doubt came from the brother’s teach- 
ing and her own severe training; but it was none the 
less humiliating to Trelawny. 

Hitherto the advantage had been mainly on his side. 
He had found his companion narrow-minded, unchar- 
itable, bounded by theological conventions, and had 
been partly aware that the enforced companionship 
with himself was educating her and rubbing the cor- 
ners off her character by very friction. Now he found 
that he had something to learn in his turn. That 
singleness of purpose! — that simple seeing of a duty 
as a duty, with no alternative ! — How long it seemed 
since he had lost the very sound of the words! He 


ii6 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


found no consolation to offer to the girl’s outburst for 
a minute, and sat looking at her helplessly. 

“I do so long for pretty things!” she went on, in 
that lower, shamed voice, as if offering him a timid 
excuse. “ You don’t know how much it means to me. 
I’ve really tried to think that it doesn’t matter, but 
when I see other girls in lovely clothes, and think what 
it feels like to wear them, I go just as wild and jealous 
and angry! I think it’s the feeling of things I want 
most — to touch silk and velvet and lace, oh, and all 
beautiful things! — it’s such a joy!” 

“You poor little pagan!” he said at last huskily, 
recognizing the unbalanced love of Beauty in her at 
last. So many women whom he knew would have 
called it an artistic temperament, and rather boasted 
of it than not, that he felt it horribly pathetic. “ And 
you never had it ? ” 

“ Yes, that is what I am — a pagan — a heathen ! ” 
She caught savagely at the phrase. “ The very re- 
verse of what I ought to be. No, I never had it. I 
wanted to hear beautiful music, to see pieces at the 
theatre — all the worst pieces, just to know what they 
were like. I dare say I should have enjoyed them all 
the more for their being bad,” she ended defiantly. 
“ But I wanted an orgy of the senses.” 

He almost laughed at the melodramatic phrase, won- 
dering where she had picked it up. But he had re- 
gained his mental superiority a little with the very 
childishness of her outburst. 

“ No, you wouldn’t,” he said firmly. “ Your mind 
is much too clean to like vile things for their vileness. 
But I dare say you would have enjoyed theatres and 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON ny 

concerts and pretty clothes, and quite innocently too. 

If we were only in London ” 

He stopped short, as suddenly as if a hand had been 
laid on his lips. For all round them stretched the 
solitude of the very wilderness, and upon their ears 
broke the booming of the surf on the outer reef — 
that fortress wall of their prison ! It was so savagely 
lonely that it cowed him, in contrast to the apex of 
civilization that his mind had conjured up. 

“If we were in London/' said the girl, with a soft 
cynicism that he did not recognize, “you would be 
with your own friends, leading your own life, and we 
should be further set apart than if we were at the two 
Poles! Tell me about yourself, now.” 

“ There is nothing to tell you that you don’t know, 
I think. I have very few relations, except the best 
old father that ever was and the two sisters I men- 
tioned who are both married and not very young — 
both older than I am, anyway. I’ve been acting as 
the Governor’s aide out in Mauritius, until I got my 
majority, and now I am going home — was going 
home, I mean — to be married.” 

“ Oh ! ” said the girl a little blankly. She seemed 
more surprised than anything else — not disappointed, 
or to have lost her interest with the introduction of 
another woman, but simply surprised, as if such a 
factor had never entered into her calculations. Then, 
as if she felt she must say something, she added shyly, 
“What is she like?” 

“ Her name is Edna Carrington, and we have known 

each other about ten years ” 

The big brown eyes in the sunburnt face opened 


n8 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


wide and obviously, even in the growing darkness. 
“ You haven’t been engaged all that time, surely! ” she 
said in open dismay. 

“ Oh, no ” — he laughed, a little as if against his 
will — “ only six months, as it happens, and it’s only 
been announced since I knew I was going home. We 
didn’t want it unnecessarily discussed all over the 
family.” 

“ You haven’t told me what she is like? ” said Les- 
lie Mackelt after another pause, during which she re- 
membered that engaged people could write to each 
other, and wondered with a little throb of heart what 
it was like to receive a love-letter ! 

“ She is tall and fair,” said Trelawny, “ with a very 
good figure. I’m afraid I can’t catalogue her any 
further ! ” 

“ I beg your pardon ! ” The quick, wounded voice 
betrayed how sensitive Leslie Mackelt was to a snub. 
He had often made her flinch so, and she had never 
quite grown used to it. “ I did not mean to be inquisi- 
tive — I was only very interested.” 

“ You weren’t inquisitive,” he said, a little remorse- 
ful because of some inexplicable irritation in himself 
that had made him speak unkindly. “ But it is a little 
impossible to describe Edna. She has very blue eyes, 
and a charming smile, and she looks at her best in her 
habit — she is a great horsewoman. There ! will that 
satisfy your feminine love of a romance?” 

“ I can — I can imagine her ! ” said the girl a little 
breathlessly. She could, in very truth, as a direct op- 
posite to herself — “ tall and fair, with blue eyes and 
a charming smile,” while she herself could hardly be 
described as tall — she was only a slim, growing thing, 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 119 

with a sallow skin (so she remembered herself in the 
looking-glasses of lost civilization) and eyes like the 
brown shallows of a stream. Well, even the men of 
her own restricted world had never admired Leslie 
Mackelt. It was not possible that such a far-off and 
splendid specimen as Major Trelawny had been could 
have done so! “Yes, I can quite imagine her!” she 
said. “ Is she as pretty as Mrs. Gellert ? ” 

“ Mrs. Gellert ! ” he repeated, amazed. “ Who on 
earth is Mrs. Gellert ? ” 

“Why, she was on board the Aristo! That lovely 
woman you always talked to ! ” 

“ Oh, that woman on the ship — yes, her husband 
was commanding a regiment in Mauritius,” he said, a 
trifle discomforted. May Gellert had been such a 
passing attraction that it was totally unexpected to 
have the ghost of an old flirtation rise up here, and the 
indictment to come out of Leslie Mackelt’s mouth. 
“ Why did you think I talked to her especially ? ” he 
said. 

“ Why, you did ! I used to see you together, so 
often. And they called her the May Queen on board, 
and she was lovely ! ” said Leslie, genuine at least in 
her admiration. 

“ She was a good-looking woman,” Trelawny ad- 
mitted, “ and she must have been a very pretty girl — 
once. I don’t remember talking to her more than to 
other people, though. It’s so odd that I never saw 
you on board, Leslie,” he added, turning from the sub- 
ject of Mrs. Gellert with unconscious relief. “We 
must have passed each other hundreds of times. And 
you say you knew me by sight? ” 

But to his surprise the girl suddenly sprang to her 


120 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


feet. “ It’s not odd at all ! ” she said curtly. “ It’s 
the only thing that could have happened. I am ugly 
and dark and dowdy — the less people that see me the 
better. I’m going to bed — good night/’ 

She was brushing past him to reach the inner cave, 
but he caught her hand a minute, dexterously. 

“ You are not ugly, at any rate,” he said in the 
teasing tone that never failed to make her furious. 
“ Dark — yes, you are rather a * nut-brown maid ’ — 
as to dowdy, I’ve never seen you in anything but the 
most picturesque rags ! And anyhow, you oughtn’t to 
fish for compliments, when you know I can’t help my- 
self ! ” 

She snatched her hand away, quivering. “ I didn’t 
— I don’t care what you say ! How dare you ! ” And 
she was gone with a bound that would have done credit 
to a wild stag. 

Trelawny lay on his back, looking up at the stars, 
with a sudden pleasurable quickening of his blood. 
It was so pleasurable, and so distracting from the 
weary monotony of despair and rebellion at the fate 
that had cast him on the Island, that he would not 
question it or struggle against it. He lay still and en- 
joyed the new sensation, with half-closed eyes that 
were yet very far from asleep, and despite his stiffened 
ankle he felt that his whole body was light and easy 
with such perfect health as he had never felt since he 
was a boy. 

Some ten minutes later a bare foot stole across the 
dried seaweed from the back of the cave, scarcely 
crackling it. 

The man’s eyes closed at once, and he lay as if 
asleep, while gentle fingers renewed the bandages once 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 12 1 


more about his foot, and some presence that was too 
shadowy to be seen raised his head cautiously to turn 
and heap his improvised pillow. Then she laid him 
down again, and stole away as she had come ; while he 
heard, for all revelation, the light sound of a girl’s 
sigh caught back between her lips. 

And the silence and the sweetness and the longing 
went on as before. 


CHAPTER IX 


“ A grim grey coast, and a seaboard ghastly, 

And shores trod seldom by feet of men — 

Where the battered hull and the broken mast lie 
They have lain embedded these long years ten. 
Love! when we wandered here together. 

Hand in hand through the sparkling weather. 

From the heights and hollows of fern and heather, 
God surely loved us a little then ! ” 


Adam Lindsay Gordon. 



>RELAWNY’S ankle took another week or so to 


-■> mend before he ventured to use it amongst the 
slippery stones of the stream or the rough growth 
along its banks; but with Leslie’s help he at length 
reached the place he had noticed before, and got pos- 
session of the coveted plantains and their suckers. 
The latter he planted with some care and labour in a 
favourable spot nearer to the caves, and both he and 
his companion watered and tended them, though they 
could not hope for any result until the following year. 
The planting of the plantains marked a new stage in 
their lives on the Island, however — it suggested the 
first acknowledgment of resignation to their lot. 
Hitherto their frantic hope of rescue had made them 
shrink from any deliberate care for the future, with 
a kind of latent superstition that it was unlucky. All 
their efforts at comfort had been for the immediate 
present, and they had agreed that it was not worth 
while to think for the morrow beyond their daily 


122 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 123 

necessities, while they strained their eyes for the mere 
hope of a sail. 

But the little patch of plantains meant more than 
the employment that they both clung to as a panacea 
for the Solitude-Madness. It meant that they could 
contemplate another stretch of days and weeks and 
months without change, locked in the green of their 
prison by the outer reefs and the booming seas. When 
Trelawny said, ‘'If these fruit, it will save our going 
so far to fetch them,” and the girl assented listlessly, 
they were digging the grave of Hope, though as yet 
she only lay sickening for her last long illness. The 
plantains flourished, and began to grow in a very short 
time, with the magical ease of that virgin soil and 
productive climate. 

Another and more obvious change had come over 
the castaways, though as yet it was only beginning, 
and its indications were not noticeable to each other. 
Trelawny was able to take up his share of the work 
again, and fished in the rock pools, or used his sling 
in the Gorge where birds were most numerous; the 
girl was occupied at her mats and rope-making, work- 
ing with busy fingers to fashion some awkward kind 
of substitute by the time their clothes were really in 
rags; but both toiled as if with a certain joy in the 
work, born of their unfettered limbs and increasing 
health, and no longer with the sole craving for employ- 
ment to keep them sane. And at sunset, when the 
time came for the evening meal, the man would come 
home weary but content, and the girl would turn as 
though satisfied to hear his step. They were compan- 
ions through misfortune, but they talked or differed 
now as friends, Trelawny, looking at Leslie by the 


124 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


glow of the dying fire, wondered if she guessed the 
physical change in herself. It was not only that her 
body had taken a stronger mould, and her limbs be- 
come round and firm instead of thin and flaccid; but 
the brown eyes were deep and satisfied with peace, as 
if the hunger of her little hot soul were stilled for the 
time at least, and her young mouth curved happily as 
if she found it easier to smile. These things he no- 
ticed and approved; but there being no looking-glass, 
he did not speculate upon the serenity of his own 
expression, or miss the hunted terror of a few weeks 
back. 

At last their long-deferred project of exploring the 
south coast-line was considered safe for Trelawny’s 
ankle, and they started at daybreak, one morning in 
February according to Trelawny’s calendar, for long 
expeditions were always arranged to time with the 
cool of the day, and noontide was set aside for rest. 
Their way lay over the cliff past the beacon, and as 
they skirted the now imposing pile the first long ripples 
of light shot out across the crest of the hills and trem- 
bled upon the sea, though they themselves were still 
in shadow. Leslie halted, leaning on her staff, and 
looked at the faint flushing sky with an expression in 
her eyes too subtle for her companion to read. 

‘‘Pretty, isn’t it?” said Trelawny, pausing in his 
turn. But his quick gaze was moving from the sea 
and sky to the sombre wooded line along the coast, 
whither they were going, and he was thinking as much 
of the denseness of the mangrove swamp as of the 
sunrise. 

“It’s so perfect — it can’t ever be as perfect 
again !” said the girl to herself, half aloud. “In a 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 125 

few minutes it will be very bright and beautiful, but it 
won’t be — this! ” Her serious eyes seemed to catch 
some reflection of that faint trembling glow upon the 
waters — the mere suggestion of warmth, the herald 
of rapture. “ It’s the beginning of things that is al- 
ways the nicest,” she said, unconsciously. 

“ It’s going to be hot enough down there later on,” 
agreed Trelawny practically. “Come along — we’d 
better make the most of the dawn. It’s the best time, 
as you say.” 

He turned away from the sea and struck off down 
the cliffs inland, to plunge into the dark growth be- 
neath. The girl followed him, with a queer little 
glance, half shy and half amused, at the broad shoul- 
ders before her under their tattered shirt. She seemed 
a little sad too, for she sighed. But he did not hear 
her. 

The line Trelawny meant to take led them straight 
into the bush and on over increasingly difficult land 
until they skirted the edge of the swamp. It took a 
long time to make their way through the mile or so of 
vegetation to the seashore, and when they reached 
the swamp it was still very dusk, for the mangroves 
grew up to a hundred feet high — splendid growths 
of trees, as Trelawny’s knowledge told him, and val- 
uable as timber. But the plantation was not large 
enough to make it worth while to establish a colony 
on the Island for purposes of trade, he supposed; or 
else, as seemed likely, the barrier of the reef had 
proved too great a protection. Either the approach 
was so dangerous that no ship had dared to come there, 
or the place was absolutely undiscovered and un- 
charted. 


126 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


“ I want to find some place on the shore where we 
can sit down and eat our fruit,” Trelawny said. “ I’m 
getting hungry, aren’t you? It must be nearly ten 
o’clock.” 

“ Yes, I suppose it’s light enough outside, though 
it’s so dark here,” responded Leslie, planting her staff 
with caution, and drawing back from the treacherous 
oozy ground. 

“ I’m afraid we must retrace our steps a little, and 
skirt the swamp. We ought not to have come when 
the tide is coming in — this will be all mud-flats when 
the water goes down on the shore. Are you very 
tired? Let me see if I can help you.” He shifted 
the plantains and other fruit that he carried slung over 
his shoulder, and passed his hand under her warm 
arm. His support would have lifted her much more 
lightly over the sticky ground; but something in his 
proximity seemed to stifle the girl in the close gloom 
of the trees, or else he gripped her arm too tightly, for 
she gasped and gave a little cry: 

“ I don’t mind the walk — but I want to get out of 
this ! Let’s push on — quick ! It’s a fever place, isn’t 
it? And I can’t bear this smell! ” She dragged her 
little feet distastefully out of the black mud. 

He laughd a little, but did not relax his hold. “ You 
don’t expect mangroves to smell like eau-de-Cologne, 
do you? They’ll be worse at low water. But you 
won’t get fever — don’t rush on so ! ” 

But she would not be stayed, and forced her way 
back again until the thick growth became thinner, and 
there were only a few stragglers between them and the 
broad bright day. So wading and clinging to the 
roots for foothold, they emerged out of the swamp on 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 127 

to a narrow strip of sand beyond which lay the blue 
sea, glittering back the splendour of the tropical day. 
Leslie paused for a minute, out of breath and very 
hot, for even the skirts of the mangrove swamp had 
been like a vapour bath, and in her exertions to get out 
she had spared neither herself nor Trelawny. She 
stood still a minute, blinking at the bright seascape be- 
fore her, and then she uttered a long, strange cry. 

“ Look ! look ! — a stranded ship ! a wreck ! ” 

The little bay whence they had emerged was so 
small a creek that it had been easily hidden from a 
long-distance view by the mangrove swamp ; the more 
so because of a curious formation in the cliffs to the 
south-west. They were hollowed out as if by the ac- 
tion of incessant waves, so that the cliff-side hung 
over and shielded half the tiny bay from view until 
actually on the shore. On the south-east the coast 
was less precipitous, but it seemed that some storm or 
volcanic eruption had torn portions of the hollowed 
cliff away and flung them out into the water, for two 
great rocks, nearly conical in shape, guarded the mouth 
of the bay like grinning jaws ; and it was between these 
two, wedged in as tightly as though by the force of 
machinery, that there lay the remains of a stranded 
ship. 

She was, or had been, a large schooner, of a hundred 
and fifty tons, three-masted and probably square- 
rigged on the foremast. But the dreadful storm that 
had driven her into those iron jaws had denuded her 
of masts and rigging, and the constant seas had swept 
her until she was almost waterlogged. She lay 
heavily over to starboard, with a great hole stove in 
her bows near the foremost bulkhead; but it would 


128 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


have taken as great a storm as had driven her into 
the clutch of those rocks to get her out again; and 
over and around her flew flocks of sea-birds, in greater 
quantities than the castaways had yet seen them, diving 
in the sea that washed her helpless stern and wheeling 
round her broken masts, but always returning to the 
wet decks. It seemed as if they had gathered in a 
crowd on one particular spot, 'midships, so white a 
patch did they make. 

There is nothing so hideously forlorn as a stranded 
ship, or so suggestive of the helplessness of humanity 
faced with the unbounded forces of Nature. The 
poor decks, seaswept and purposeless in the great tropic 
day, seemed more desolate than the desolate Island ; 
the broken masts lifted themselves in vain to a pitiless 
heaven — the few stays and shrouds flapping idly 
about the battered hull made her like a ruined 
woman with her rags fluttering in the wind. Aban- 
doned by man, her master, she fell back into the 
sphere of rottenness, and was the more hideous by 
contrast to her fancied beauty under full sail. Leslie 
Mackelt, gazing at her in her wreckage, lost the first 
impression of a link with civilization, and saw only her 
pathos and desertion. 

‘‘Oh, the poor thing! the poor thing!" she cried, 
as if it were a vital misery that she looked on, and 
dropping down on the sands she buried her face in her 
hands, crying bitterly. 

Trelawny had not spoken, but from his very heart 
as it were the breath tore its way in one great sob, 
and he stood staring — staring at the wreck. It lay 
so close to the land as to be nearly beached ; but when 
the tide was full, as now, the water ran deep between 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 129 


it and the sloping shore, and laughed and rippled 
round the stern. At low tide it seemed probable that 
one might wade over and climb on board with little 
difficulty. 

When at last the man spoke there was almost a 
wondering bitterness in his tone. 

“ And she’s been lying here ever since we came, and 
we never knew it ! ” 

Then his eyes fell on the girl, crouched at his feet 
on the sand, and he knelt down quickly and laid his 
hand on her shoulder. She could feel it tremble a 
little, as if with excitement. “ Leslie,” he said, “ don’t 
cry ! What’s the matter — dear ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know ! ” she gasped, her face still hid- 
den. “ Only it looked so like — us ! ” 

“ Yes, I know,” he said confusedly, but he did not 
quite know, his brain being less sensitive to such im- 
agery. “ But don’t cry — don’t you see that it means 
that men have been here before, that we are not quite 
desolate ? ” 

She raised her head and looked at the wreck with 
a shudder. “ They abandoned her ! ” she said in a 
low voice. “ They never came here ! There are no 
boats ” 

“ That’s true ! ” he muttered — for the davits, 
twisted and bent as they were, showed no sign of the 
boats having been carried away by the storm. They 
had probably been cleared of this one hope of safety 
before the ship was driven on to the rocks. “ That’s 
true — they took to the boats out at sea, and she was 
driven here afterwards. But it means that there is 
traffic in these waters — we are not out of the trade 
routes!” And his voice rose to triumphant hope 
9 


13 o THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

again. “ Come out of the sun, and let’s get into the 
shelter of these cliffs, where you can wash your feet 
in the rock pools,” he went on coaxingly, remember- 
ing his companion. “ We must stay here till low tide, 
and then we can get on board and see what she was 
and where she came from. At least I can ” 

“ I shall go if you do! ” Leslie said, with a sudden 
sharp fear in her voice. 

“ Very well, we’ll go together.” He spoke sooth- 
ingly, as if to a child who must be indulged, and put- 
ting his arms round her lifted her to her feet. She 
followed him sullenly to the deep shadow of the cliff, 
and there they sat down to eat their fruit and watch 
their new treasure, lying just out of reach in the sunny 
bay ; but Leslie was curiously subdued, and hardly en- 
tered into Trelawny’s speculations and hopes. 

“ They can’t have taken everything with them. Les- 
lie, do you realize that we may find tools ? ” 

“We may find clothes — of sorts!” said the girl, 
with a little glance down at her tattered knees and 
muddied feet. “ I suppose all the food is rotted, or 
eaten by the fishes.” 

“ It depends on the storage, and what part of her is 
under water. There might be some tinned stuff. I’m 
afraid the water will have got into the hold — I won- 
der what her cargo was? Leslie, do you know I be- 
lieve this accounts for the hen ! ” 

“ The hen!” 

“ Yes, our phantom hen. Don’t you see they were 
sure to have live stock — at least fowls — and that 
one poor lean wretch managed to get ashore. How 
she escaped the snakes and rats I don’t know. All 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 13 1 

her eggs must have been sucked, or if she had a brood 
they couldn’t be raised.” 

“ Then it really was a hen, after all ! ” 

She laughed almost hysterically, but his amusement 
was more natural. The advantage was all with him, 
for the discovery of the ship set his energies to work 
and gave him something to think about; whereas the 
girl had a new mental attitude that troubled her, and 
a fancy against which she struggled vainly that the 
ship cast a shadowy barrier between them. It was 
only the extraordinary position that they were in that 
had forced them into companionship, as she rec- 
ognized. Had they remained in the civilized social 
world, nothing could or would have forged a link be- 
tween her existence and Miles Trelawny’s. Their cir- 
cumstances, their upbringing — their very instincts, it 
seemed, were against it. And they might have re- 
mained on the same boat, in the same town, even in the 
same hotel, for months or years, and never even 
spoken. Now the stranded ship brought them into 
touch with their old divided lives again, and made her 
feel her insufficiency as he never dreamed of her doing. 
It reminded her that with the gain of rescue must 
come the loss of this new friendship, and it was an 
experience infinitely more exciting and full of glamour 
to the girl than to the man, in all aspects save the one 
of personal attraction. Trelawny loomed a much 
larger figure on her narrow horizon than he would have 
done on Mrs. Gellert’s, for instance. He was almost 
magical, a Prince Charming, in the attributes she gave 
him; and despite her struggle to keep her mental su- 
periority, she was rapidly withdrawing her claim even 


132 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

to that, and perhaps humbled herself unduly in the 
other extreme. 

The tide had been on the turn when they emerged in 
sight of the ship, and Trelawny calculated that within 
two or three hours it would be low enough to enable 
them to wade out and board her. They employed the 
tedious waiting in getting rid of the black, smooth 
mud of the mangrove swamp, washing their feet in 
the salt pools ; but the man was impatient to begin his 
investigations, for it would then be two o'clock, and 
at that time of the year the sun set at six or seven. 
They dared not linger after he was far down the 
heavens if they meant to reach the cave again before 
dark, for there was the mangrove swamp to skirt and 
a mile or so of the bush to penetrate before they 
reached the western shore, added to which they hardly 
knew their way as yet, and could not gauge the dis- 
tance as Trelawny did in the more familiar Gorge. 
As soon, therefore, as he judged that the water would 
not be more than breast-high he proposed making the 
attempt, though he urged Leslie to stay behind on the 
rocks and wait his return. She was not to be de- 
terred, however. 

“If you go, I shall go too,” she said obstinately, 
and he perforce allowed her to follow him into the 
water. 

The shore sloped gradually for the first thirty yards 
or so, and then fell abruptly, so that Trelawny found 
himself rather suddenly in deeper water. He looked 
round anxiously for the girl behind him, and offered 
to take her hand; but she was plodding doggedly on, 
and the ebbing tide did not reach above her waist, nor 
would she accept assistance. He asked her could she 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 133 

swim, and she said yes, but he was relieved that this 
was not necessary, though once he found himself in a 
hole that soused him to the armpits, and he uttered 
an exclamation of thankfulness when he felt that he 
had reached what must be the base of the shattered 
rocks, and almost tripped up and stumbled against 
their crests rising clear of the water. For a few 
minutes he could hardly get a foothold, and cried out 
to his companion to stop where she was; then he 
clutched some of the broken rigging that hung over 
the side of the ship itself, and gripping the netting, 
clambered over the gunwale and jumped on to the deck, 
which was still wet and slippery from the daily inflow 
of the tide. His appearance disturbed the sea-birds, 
and he nearly started back from the whirr of wings as 
they rose, screaming and beating their pinions upon 
all sides of him. Then he saw that they had nested 
on the deserted ship, and that the hatches were liter- 
ally covered with their nests. He was so taken up 
with the extraordinary scene they made that for the 
moment he forgot the girl, and when he turned she had 
reached the ship’s side and was looking for a foothold 
to follow him. 

“ Take care, Leslie ! Give me your hand,” he called, 
mounting on the bollard to hang over the gunwale. 
But Leslie was light and active, and made hardly more 
of the boarding than he had done himself. With the 
salt water dripping from their tattered clothes they 
stood at last, breathless and triumphant, on the steep 
slope of the deck, and so strange did anything made 
by man feel to their bare feet that for a minute it 
seemed as if they could hardly keep their balance. 
They stood where, presumably, the fresh water had 


134 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

been stored, but even the iron tank had got adrift, and 
only the staples and lashings which secured it were left 
as evidence that something had been there. The 
harness cask, where the salt junk is kept, had rolled 
over, and the lid was off, showing the inside empty 
and mildewed. The galley had been partly wrecked 
by the falling mainmast, and that it had not been en- 
tirely so was due to the spar deck taking the brunt of 
the damage, but there were no spars there now, of 
course — the storm had swept them overboard long 
before it took the masts out of the schooner, and the 
boats were gone as well. Abaft the mainmast was a 
small cabin where apprentices might be berthed, and 
this had practically escaped damage; but Trelawny 
was bent on some definite discovery as to the ship’s 
voyage and destination, and he knew he would not 
find it there. 

“ Let’s get aft, and see what she was and where she 
was going,” he said impatiently at last. “ There ought 
to be some sort of rough log, if it isn’t washed away.” 

He felt his way along the scuppers and climbed by 
the broken ladder on to the poop, which was still slip- 
pery with salt water, though the bows were high and 
dry above the inroads of the tides. The schooner had 
indeed the appearance of a very drunken man who 
cannot keep his balance and has fallen on his side, 
but still holds his head in the air. On the poop, which 
caught the full force of the waves, remained the ruins 
of what had been the binacle, but there was nothing 
else, and he lowered himself again to the level of the 
deck, where, under the break of the poop, stood the 
wheelhouse and a small locker; the salt water had 
rusted the hinges and oozed into it, so that when, after 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 135 

an effort, he forced the lid up, he was disappointed to 
find that the papers he sought were all but illegible. 
The rough log kept on deck was but a brief record 
in pencil at best, and of this half was so soaked and 
caked with salt that he could not decipher it. All 
that he could make out was the schooner’s name — the 
Golden Gate — and some record of weather and lati- 
tude that he was hardly seaman enough to understand. 
Even the date of the final entry was obliterated, but 
he put the book carefully aside to dry in the sun, with 
the faint hope of perusing it further at his leisure. 
The girl had stood by in silence while he made his in- 
vestigations, and only spoke when he abandoned his 
useless study of the soaked pages. 

“ Well ? ” she said shortly. 

“ She’s the Golden Gate — sails from San Francisco 
most likely, but I can hardly make out anything. 
We’ll take some of these charts and the book back 
with us and see what we can make of them.” 

“ What are you going to do now ? ” 

“ Get into the Captain’s cabin if I can, and look for 
the real log — the ship’s log. By Jove! I hope they 
didn’t take it with them ! Come along, Leslie — this 
is exploring with a vengeance.” 

The girl was so ignorant of sailing ships that she 
could not tell if the master would berth aft or for’ard, 
but she followed Trelawny passively, as he turned to 
the three small cabins below the poop, where the offi- 
cers presumably berthed. There were two on the port 
side and one on the starboard, and Trelawny tried the 
door of the latter. It swung idly to his hand, as 
though the lock had long since lost its uses, and nearly 
precipitated him into more water and a scene of utter 


136 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

desolation. Owing to the lie of the ship the berth 
was under water, and the discoloured rags that lay on 
it had become a home for strange and repulsive life 
innumerable. Where the drawers under the bunk had 
been, seaweed and barnacles had gradually made a 
loathsome covering, so that he had to tear them away 
to get hold of the handles, and anemones had grown 
and died upon the walls, making a faint fishy stench 
in the air. There was little hope of finding anything 
worth preserving, but over the washstand, and just 
above the line of the encroaching water, hung a square 
of looking-glass, very dim and dirty but unbroken. 
Trelawny peered at it as an object never encountered 
before, and saw a strange sight — a bearded face, 
burnt brick-red, with tangled hair under a roughly 
woven head-gear that was more like an inverted basket 
than a hat (for Leslie was not yet skilful with her 
fingers), and withal a robustef, more savage version 
of himself than he had ever seen. For a moment he 
did not recognize his own face, and swung round 
quickly to meet the thing he fancied behind him; but 
there was only the patient figure of the girl, waiting 
a few yards off on the upward slope of the deck. 

“ Don’t come in here, Leslie ! ” he called brusquely. 
“ The water is foul, and the place smells — pah ! ” 

“ Come out yourself, then ! ” said the girl quickly. 

“ In a minute — I must see what is in these draw- 
ers.” He made shift to feel with his hands, for 
there was little light, and he was hampered by the 
water and the seaweed ; but he jerked the drawer open 
at last, and dragging out some of the contents he 
staggered towards the doorway again to examine his 
treasures. They were mouldy and rotting, but 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 137 

climbing up the steep deck, out of the wet, he and the 
girl looked at them together. A suit of blue serge, 
some flannel shirts, and a pair of white duck trousers 
— all stiff with salt, discoloured past relief, and smell- 
ing vilely — that was all. “ There is more beneath,” 
said Trelawny with set lips. “ I must go back ” 

“Wait — let us try that cabin behind the mast,” 
said the girl quickly, pointing to the little structure 
abaft the galley where the sea had evidently not been 
able to penetrate. “ At least that cannot be under 
water ” 

Trelawny abandoned his search a little reluctantly. 
Even the clothes were a find supposing that they could 
be sufficiently soused in fresh water and dried in the 
sun to make them wearable, and did not fall to pieces 
in the process. He had not told her of the looking- 
glass, either; but he remembered it for a purpose al- 
ready dawning in his mind. 

“ Well,” he said, spreading his burden of evil-smell- 
ing clothes carefully over the gunwale to dry in the 
sun, “ come along, if you like.” 

The cabin abaft the galley was not so easy to en- 
ter, for the door had actually been shut, and had 
jammed. Moreover, the slant of the deck was so 
great that Trelawny could barely stand upright, and he 
was for abandoning it and going back to the captain’s 
cabin, when it showed signs of yielding. Leslie added 
her small strength to his, and together they wrenched 
it open far enough to get in, finding that the girl’s 
surmise had been right and that it was at least dry and 
water-tight. 

It seemed stranger still to stand in that little place, 
some time inhabited by a human being, and aban- 


138 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

cloned for how long they could not tell, but undoubt- 
edly just as he had left it. There were mute signs 
of a hurried flight — almost at the moment when it 
was decided to take to the boats, perhaps — for the 
bedclothes on the berth were half flung on the floor, 
and a strong trunk of American make that had been 
left behind was unstrapped and unlocked. It bore the 
initials “ G.I.,” and had evidently been hurriedly 
cleared of clothing or valuables of some sort. But its 
mere presence suggested a new idea to Trelawny. The 
officers of the ship would not have used such a place to 
keep their clothes or personal belongings — they would 
use the lockers and chests assigned to them. Further- 
more, this was not a cabin belonging to the mates, 
though it might have been intended for apprentices, 
for it had two bunks. 

“ Leslie,” he said, “ the Golden Gate carried one 
passenger at least — let us see what he left behind 
him.” 

They knelt down on the sloping floor and opened 
the trunk. A large cockroach ran almost over their 
hands, causing Leslie to give a suppressed shriek and 
fling herself to the further wall, but save for these 
noisome insects the belongings of G.I. remained in- 
tact. Neither rats nor sea monsters had injured them, 
and allowing for the inevitably musty smell the clothes 
were very much as this unlooked-for traveller had 
packed them. They consisted of other things besides 
clothes, for which Trelawny was frankly sorry — 
curios picked up in most parts of the world, it would 
seem, for there was a beautiful shawl of Indian pat- 
tern, and a Zulu petticoat ornamented with lines and 
lines of buttons, that had come from East Africa; 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 139 

some fine carved ivory from China, a strip of em- 
broidery from Japan, a length of some strange cloth 
with a branch pattern that Trelawny thought came 
from the Sandwich Islands, besides some little bottles 
and boxes containing what seemed bits of stick or 
rock; all were packed between soft linen shirts and 
flannel coats and trousers — he was a careless fellow, 
was G.I., but he had evidently prepared himself for a 
stay of some length in a tropical latitude. Trelawny 
heaved a deep sigh and handled the shirts almost rev- 
erently. 

“ You were right, Leslie — this was the right cabin 
for us ! ” he said. “ We must get these things over 
dry, anyway. I wonder if I could get the whole trunk 
on my shoulder ? ” 

“ You’d better change first, somewhere on the 
ship,” said the girl a trifle scornfully. “ You are wet 
enough ! ” 

“ So are you!” he retorted. “There are lots of 
things you can wear too, can’t you? Look at this 
cloth!” 

But the girl sprang up in a strange fit of per- 
versity. “Oh, I dare say!” she said, pulling herself 
round the cabin to the empty bunk by aid of anything 
that would aid her to keep her feet. “ I’ll look when 
you get it to the cave. I expect I can manage ” 

She reached over the little bed to a narrow shelf 
above it which had apparently held books, for one 
volume still lay there, though the rest — as she after- 
wards discovered — had been thrown about the floor 
as the ship rolled in her distress. It was a book of 
poetry, and the girl’s hands trembled greedily as she 
opened it, more than the man’s had done in touching 


140 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


the clothes. There, on the fly-leaf, was the owner’s 
name — Gideon Ivermay — and on the title page 
“ Poems and Ballads, Vol. II, Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne.” 

Needless to say, Swinburne had never dawned on 
Leslie’s methodist horizon. She glanced at a few 
lines a little further on, closed the worn volume and 
slipped it under her arm with a furtive air. Trelawny 
had closed the trunk again, and strapped it. He also 
appeared to be searching for something, and spoke 
rather hurriedly when she turned to him. 

“ What have you got there ? ” 

“ Only a book. What are you looking for — 
tools?” 

“ N-no. The rest of the fellow’s things. He packed 
what he didn’t want to use in this trunk. He must 
have had a portmanteau or something ” 

“ Probably he took it with him, then.” 

“I hope not!” Trelawny looked unaccountably 
disappointed, for there were clothes enough in the 
trunk. “What’s the book?” he said. 

“ Oh, nothing.” It was her turn to be guilty now. 
“ But his name is in it — Gideon Ivermay. Hadn’t 
we better go and look for tools ? ” 

“Yes — but that was a good thought of yours to 
look in his books — even a name seems some sort of a 
link!” said Trelawny a little wistfully. “Gideon 
Ivermay. We may find some memoranda of his some- 
where, about the voyage. He was sure to keep a diary 
if he was a bookish man. Go on first and give me 
room to get out the trunk.” 

Leslie did as requested, still hugging her treasure 
under her arm, and so aware that Trelawny would 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 141 

condemn its unpractical value that she did not notice 
though he did not join her immediately. When he did 
he had an air of renewed satisfaction, and something 
had been added to the contents of the trunk. 

It would be difficult enough to hoist the latter over 
the ship’s side, anyway, but Trelawny thought that 
they might manage it together in spite of the discom- 
fort of their wet clothes and the great heat. It was 
now about three o’clock to judge by the sun, and at 
four they must start for the cave ; so leaving the trunk 
on deck they went to explore the rest of the ship, and 
to gather whatever was of immediate value or use to 
them. 

The Golden Gate had carried a cargo of copra, and 
was presumably taking it to America, to judge by the 
make of her stores and the flavour of nationality in 
all they unearthed. On this first occasion of boarding 
her Trelawny forgot to look for her name-plate, but 
he found it afterwards on the mainmast — “ ‘ Golden 
Gate ’ Jeddow, San Francisco ” — and that settled the 
question. The hold had been partially filled with 
water from the damage to the hull, but the copra was 
not of much value to the castaways, and they regretted 
it the less in that the galleys, being amidships, had 
been spared, and the men’s oilskins in the fo’c’sle were 
equally untouched. There were, as Trelawny had 
hoped, plenty of tools, though they were a good deal 
rusted, and of some of these he made a bundle, en- 
trusting them to Leslie. The clothes found in the 
captain’s cabin they stored safely in Gideon Ivermay’s, 
but did not attempt to carry with them, and all further 
investigations Trelawny felt compelled to leave until 
another day. He had, anyhow, both clothes and tools, 


142 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

and having lightened the trunk of all the curios except 
the Indian shawl and the native cloth, he felt more 
assured of being able to carry it porter fashion on his 
shoulders. It was not very large or very heavy, but 
the difficulty lay in lowering it over the ship’s side and 
not dropping it in the water, for though the tide had 
run so far out that there was now only some fifty yards 
to wade to dry land, the sea flowed deeper round the 
base of the rocks, and even to get a footing was peril- 
ous. He went over the starboard side of the Golden 
Gate as he had boarded her, having first fastened a 
short length of rope round the trunk, and taken a turn 
round the bollard. He dropped the trunk overboard 
before he followed it himself, showing Leslie how to 
brace her feet against the side of the ship and use the 
leverage of the rope to lower her burden once he was 
in the water. She proved quite strong enough for the 
task, but it was no easy matter to hoist the trunk 
on to his own shoulders and loosen the rope, hampered 
as he was by insecure foothold, nor could he help her 
to clamber over the gunwale. Her months of forced 
activity over bush and rough ground, however, had 
made her a nimble associate, and once on the rocks by 
his side it was by her suggestion that he abandoned 
the effort to unfasten the rope, and simply coiled the 
end round and round his waist. Her own bundle 
being slung over her shoulders, and lighter far 
than his, her hands were free and able to assist 
him; but nevertheless it was a relief to both of 
them when they had cleared the beach and entered 
the mangrove swamp again, despite the heavy 
ground. 

“ We must hurry,” said Trelawny, with an anxious 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 143 

glance at the sun. “We don’t want to be stranded 
in the bush and have to camp out.” 

“ I do hate this mud ! ” said the girl distastefully, 
picking her way from one rope-like root to another to 
avoid the black slime. “ Oh, do look at those crabs! ” 

The ground was alive with them, red, blue, and yel- 
low, such strange colours and such strange shapes that 
the swamp seemed the more eerie for their presence. 
Trelawny would have liked to have taken some home 
to see if they were edible, but it was impossible to 
carry them, and they pushed on, able to take a more 
direct route than in the morning, when it had been 
necessary to skirt the swamp. The light was really 
better too, for the afternoon sun penetrated between 
the great trunks of the trees as his vertical rays had 
not been able to do through their thick crowns. 

“ You had far better walk in one of these little 
streams; the bed is much firmer than the mud,” said 
Trelawny in expostulation, as his companion sank up 
to her knees in a warm, dark patch. He himself was 
splashing on doggedly, though the heat of the swamp 
and the weight of the box made his skin stream with 
perspiration. Leslie looked down at her muddied legs 
and relapsed into vexed silence until they had cleared 
the swamp ; but, indeed, there was not much to choose 
between her appearance and Trelawny’s. Both were 
unusually conscious of looking at a disadvantage in 
the other’s eyes, and toiled on with the double object 
of rest and refreshment when they reached the cave. 
It was hardly better in the bush, save that the ground 
was firmer, but once they had climbed the cliff to the 
beacon a freshening wind from the sea cooled their 
faces and braced them for their last half-mile. 


144 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

Trelawny halted at the top of the ascent, and looked 
back at the curve of shore from which they had come, 
but though sunset was flooding the sea and lighting 
up the western bay, all sign of the Golden Gate was 
completely hidden from them by the guardian cliff. 

“ She might have lain there for years and we never 
known if we had not thought to explore that coast! ” 
he muttered. It seemed an appalling loss now that he 
had actually some of the schooner’s stores and stuffs 
in his possession, with more to follow. 

Leslie had hardly paused. When he looked round 
for her he found that she had run on ahead, and was 
tending the fire which they had banked up before they 
set out on their expedition. It had smouldered 
through the night, and it was smouldering still; but 
the feeble spark needed much coaxing to revive it. 

“ Let it alone,” said Trelawny, lowering the trunk 
from his shoulders with a sigh of relief. “ Don’t 
trouble for to-night. We can do with plantain, and 
eat the bread-fruit uncooked. All I want is a bath 
with soap, and one of these blessed clean shirts ! ” 

“ We can do with the bread-fruit better if it’s 
cooked ! ” retorted the girl dryly. “ And those shirts 
will be damp, packed away for you don’t know how 
long! ” Her unspoken jealousy of his civilization be- 
trayed itself in her voice. “ You had better wait and 
dry them in the sun to-morrow. There is no need to 
dress up to-night ! ” 

But Trelawny’s satisfaction was proof against 
satire. He went down to the rock pools, humming, 
and the sound floated up to the girl as she cooked the 
supper, denying herself the relief of a bath until that 
should be done. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 145 

Take a pair of sparkling eyes — 

Hidden ever and anon 
In a merciful eclipse — 

Do not heed their mild surprise — 

Having passed the Rubicon, 

Take a pair of rosy lips." 

Leslie Mackelt raised her head with the old sullen 
resentment back on her face, and listened to the pretty 
notes floating up over the jutting rocks behind which 
lay Trelawny’s bathing-place. He was far out of 
sight, but the song carried faintly — faintly : 

“ Take my counsel, happy man ! 

Act upon it if you can — 

If you can ! " 

The sullenness faded from the girl’s face, and her lips 
curved upwards again. She did not smile, but she 
looked as if she could rejoice that others should; and 
that is the first lesson of charity. 


IQ 


CHAPTER X 


Pleasure with dry lips, and pain that walks by night — 
All the sting and all the stain of long delight; 

These were things she knew not of, that knew not of her, 
When she played at half a love with a half a lover.” 


A. C. Swinburne. 



RELAWNY wished many times in the days that 


«■» followed that he had been a Naval man, or, as 
he said, in the Engineers — any branch of the Serv- 
ices, indeed, wherein men are taught to use their skill 
and their hands together. He was a fair carpenter, 
and now that he had tools could turn his knowledge 
to account; but it had been acquired when a boy, be- 
cause he liked it, and since he entered the Army he 
had had little or no practice, while of electricity and 
engineering he knew practically nothing, and so could 
not make use of many of the forces which he vainly 
felt ought to be at his command with the discovery of 
the ship and her treasures of minerals and chemicals. 
His profession had taught him how to groom a horse, 
and to sign “ returns ” at which he hardly looked ; 
but unfortunately these accomplishments were not val- 
uable on a desert island. Even Leslie Mackelt had 
been handier with her fingers. 

They made a second excursion to the Golden Gate 
next day, timing their visit by the tides, and were thus 
able to cross the swamp and wade out to the ship di- 
rect, returning while the water was still low. On this 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 147 

occasion Trelawny drove off the sea-birds, and ruth- 
lessly disturbed their nests to get at the for’ard hatch, 
and lower himself into the hold. It took some time 
and labour for his unaccustomed hands to remove the 
tarpaulin and the grating, but once in the hold he dis- 
covered the reason why the schooner had been aban- 
doned at sea, as she must have been, instead of those 
on board her clinging to the safety she afforded until 
she actually struck. All the damage to her hull had 
obviously been done when she was driven on the rocks, 
and had her officers and crew remained on board they 
would have been comparatively safe, and able to get 
ashore when the storm abated. But there was no sign 
of their having done so, or of their having been res- 
cued afterwards by another vessel, for they would 
surely have returned to the wreck for more of their 
property, and the whole affair had puzzled Trelawny 
extremely. Once in the hold, and among the copra, 
however, he understood. There were evidences of a 
fire having started in the for’ard hatch, and though it 
had not spread very far those in command of the ship 
had probably considered it hopeless to attempt to fight 
the flames and manage the vessel in the teeth of the 
storm at the same time. She must have been left to 
drift, smoking, but as soon as she struck upon the 
rocks the water rushing into the hold had extinguished 
the fire, and left her merely with a damaged cargo. 
As to the copra, Trelawny did not much care, though 
he took the precaution to put the grating back and 
cover it with tarpaulin to protect the hold. It was 
unlikely that they would ever be driven to such des- 
perate straits as to try and subsist upon copra, with 
the natural resources of the Island, and he had no 


148 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

means of extracting the oil, which would have been 
useful. They left it where it was for the present, and 
set about securing and transporting such things as 
were valuable to them. The tools and clothes they 
could carry and store at the back of the cave, but for 
the more bulky articles, such as chests and lockers, 
which he hoped to get round to the western coast by 
degrees, Trelawny came to the conclusion that he must 
put up some sort of a shelter to make him inde- 
pendent of the tides and the getting them ashore when 
he proposed moving them. The caves were too stable, 
and therefore valuable in times of storm, to be aban- 
doned; otherwise he would have felt inclined to start 
his housekeeping above the little bay where lay the 
Golden Gate. As it was he made a rough bamboo 
hut near that shore, for the storage of such articles 
as he wanted to bring away from the ship and could 
not transport all at once; and later on he planned to 
build a more solid log cabin on the rising land above 
the western beach. 

It was upon the second journey to the ship that they 
discovered such provisions as were not injured by the 
water or the climate, and packed them carefully for 
conveyance ashore. They were stored aft, under a 
small hatch before the wheel, and Trelawny descended 
gingerly amongst them, with a ship's lantern. He 
found that the lime-juice cask, to his chagrin, had 
become hopelessly musty, and such things as sugar 
and flour had been rendered practically unusable by 
the cockroaches. But the tinned things — the “ bully- 
beef ” that sailors love, and the butter and biscuits, 
had withstood their onslaught, and were veritable 
treasures. On coming on a quantity of jam, indeed, 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 149 

Trelawny raised such a howl of triumph as brought 
Leslie’s anxious face to the open hatch, peering in on 
him. 

“What is the matter? What have you found?” 
she called down to him. “ Shall I try to come and 
help you ? ” 

“ Don’t you dare to, as you value your life, or I 
might murder you for its possession ! ” He thrust his 
head and shoulders up through the opening, and 
showed a heated, sunburnt face, grinning under the 
shade of the plaited hat. “ I’ve found biscuits and 
butter (have you ever eaten tinned butter? it’s vile!) 
and jam — jam — jam! Leslie, we’ll have some 
tarts. Can you make pastry? ” 

“ Not with musty flour!” 

“ Then we must do with the biscuits. My sainted 
aunt ! but there are riches down there for two starving 
cannibals.” He broke into an old comic song that hacl 
certainly never assaulted Leslie’s guarded ears before, 
in a fine baritone : 

“Some mulligatawny soup — 

A mackerel and a sole, 

A Banbury, a Bath bun — 

And a twopenny sausage roll. 

A little drop of sherry — 

A little drop of cham — 

Some roly-poly pudding 
And some jam! jam! jam!” 

“ What nonsense ! ” said the girl half crossly, trying 
not to smile at his dancing eyes. “ You seem to have 
gone mad down there. Do go on with your investiga- 
tions, or we shall never have finished.” She added 
half shyly, “I didn’t know you could sing — like 


ISO THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

“ I used to be the darling of my Mess ! Oh, I’m a 
bright boy at a sing-song.” His tone of mock conceit 
made her uncertain whether to laugh or frown. Tre- 
lawny’s chaff belonged to no known category of inter- 
course in Leslie Mackelt’s experience. 

“ You had better go back to your jam — you may 
find more ! ” she remarked dryly, and he ducked down 
again, to report later that he had found a small quan- 
tity of spirits, both tea and coffee, tinned milk, and the 
officers sea-chests. His investigation of the latter 
made him independent of the spoilt clothes in the cap- 
tain’s cabin; but what was a serious loss was his dis- 
covery there of the real ship’s log, hardly more legible 
than the one he had found on deck. 

“ I can make out a word that ought to be San 
Francisco,” he said to Leslie, as they peered over the 
blotched and cockled pages on the hot deck. “ This 
must be the entry on leaving harbour, what I want to 
get at is a date.” 

“ I don’t believe we shall ever find out how long she 
has been here,” said Leslie despondently. “ It might 
be years and years to judge by the way that things 
have rotted and rusted.” 

“ You must allow for the climate. In a tropical 
country things will wear out, or be eaten by insects, in 
a quarter of the time they would take in the north. 
I don’t believe she has been here a year.” 

“ Why?” 

“ Because there must be a hurricane, or stormy 
season, and she might have been swept off the rock 
again, or broken up completely.” 

“ In that case we’d better make all the haste we can 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 15 1 

and get everything we want out of her. Fve found 

some knives and forks ” 

“The deuce you have!” Trelawny looked as 
pleased as though it were a gold mine in the everyday 
world. “ I was wondering what had become of their 
cutlery. Where were they ? ” 

“ In that pantry place in the middle of the ship ” 

“ My dear child ! ” he burst out laughing — a 
hearty, natural laugh that disturbed the wheeling gulls 
and mingled oddly with their sad cries. “ Do try and 
call it the galley, and say * ’midships V 99 he said. 
“ You are the veriest little landlubber ! ” 

She flushed hotly, as she always did when teased; 
but the beautiful colour was partly due to something 
in his tones nowadays — something possessive, and 
almost caressing, as he might have spoken endearingly 
to a child. 

“ Well, it doesn’t matter ! ” she said hastily. “ I 
found them — down on the floor, the deck I mean, 
under all these broken dishes and cups.” 

“I wish the crockery had been left whole!” said 
Trelawny ruefully. “ The metal things are mostly 
all right, except for rust; but we can’t afford to lose 
any. Well, I must try to do some tinkering.” 

“ I can boil the fish in the saucepan, anyway,” said 
Leslie, with satisfaction in her tones. The racks and 
fittings of the galley had stood, and the pots and pans 
though rusty were still intact and even in their places 
as they had been left. The exiles had felt the monot- 
ony of fish and bread-fruit constantly baked or roast, 
and welcomed the thought of a utensil that would hold 
water. “ What a pity none of the live stock sur- 


152 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

vived ! ” the girl added with a little laugh. “ Except, 
of course, our phantom hen!” 

“ Yes, and she’s no good to us. Gallivanting on the 
north end of the Island, and coquetting with snakes 
as likely as not ! ” 

There were evidences on the schooner that fowls at 
least had been carried, as Trelawny had supposed, but 
they had either all gone overboard, or had struggled 
ashore and fallen victims to the snakes and rats. The 
medicine chest that stood in the captain’s cabin was 
ruined by the salt water, and Trelawny threw the 
broken bottles and crystallized drugs overboard in 
disgust, and a prudent fear that did he attempt to use 
them he would do harm rather than good. He was 
too ignorant of chemicals to say whether the corrosive 
action of the salt, and the venomous effects of the 
climate, might not have had a poisonous effect, and 
decided not to allow either Leslie or himself to touch 
them. And he only kept such stimulants as they found 
on board for medical purposes, and proposed taking a 
solemn oath that neither of them should touch the 
dangerous spirits unless in dire necessity. 

“ We must keep the small quantity that I have found 
in case of snake bites or fever,” he said gravely, while 
the girl stared at him with her big eyes as if she 
hardly understood him. “ Otherwise I would almost 
rather throw it overboard with the drugs. Look here, 
Leslie, give me your word you’ll never touch the stuff 
without my knowledge, and I’ll do the same to 
you ! ” 

“ But I never do drink spirits ! ” said the girl a 
trifle indignantly. “ I think they are far worse than 
medicines.” 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 153 

“ I know you don’t.” Trelawny closed his lips 
oddly, and looked away over the blue ripples of the 
bay. “ But we haven’t got to the end of our endur- 
ance yet — we don’t either of us know to what straits 
we may be driven. I know it sounds as if the tempta- 
tion were ten thousand times as likely to be mine as 
yours — and I am willing to pledge you my sacred 
word of honour for that very reason. But — we 
can’t judge ourselves out here at the end of every- 
thing and the beginning of nothing as we would in 
the everyday world. Do you remember the Solitude- 
Madness ? ” 

She turned rather white and her eyes were fright- 
ened as she looked up at him, even at the memory. 

“ Well, were you immune any more than I ? ” he 
asked gently. “If we had found spirits then — 
stimulants, drugs, anything that would have helped 
us out of our terror — should we either have resisted? 
And it would have been ten times worse after- 
wards ” He seemed almost as if he were speak- 

ing to himself rather than to her, seeing some horrible 
prophetic vision of what might be. “ Come ! let’s 
shake hands and swear never to drink, unless to avert 
death. We will trust each other’s honour to save us 
where everything else might fail.” 

She put her hand into his, and so they swore faith. 

Trelawny was a little consoled for the loss of the 
ship’s medicine chest by the discovery of a smaller 
case in Gideon Ivermay’s cabin, though it held only a 
few simple remedies — quinine and carbonate of 
potash were in the largest quantities — but all such as 
might prove useful, and appeared unharmed. There 
was also a pair of medical scissors — sharp, delicate 


154 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


things with rounded tops, that he promptly dedicated 
to another use. 

“ Leslie,” he said, with a certain amount of diffi- 
dence, when they were examining them. “ I wonder 
if you could cut my hair for me ! ” 

“ Why do you want it cut? ” asked the girl, staring 
with all her brown eyes at his half-sheepish face. 
There was a faint distrust in her tones, born of that 
grudge against civilization. 

“Well, a fellow doesn’t want to go about with half 
a yard of hair hanging down his back! It makes me 
so beastly hot. Do cut it for me, there’s a dear! I 
forebore to burn it off — as you said you shouldn’t 
come near me.” 

“ I certainly shouldn’t ! And I think it’s very silly 
to want to cut it — I’m trying to grow mine, and 
I’m not any hotter than I was before. If you cut 
yours it will only grow thicker and longer than be- 
fore.” 

“ Then you can cut it again — or I can. Of course, 
if you don’t like doing it for me I must do it myself.” 
He turned away, as if huffed, but between annoyance 
and laughter she called him back. 

“ Here ! sit on this — ” she pointed to the bollard, 
which was beyond her vocabulary — “ and give me 
those scissors. I’ll do it — but you’ll probably look 
worse than before.” 

“ Keep it as even as you can, and crop it close ! ” 
said Trelawny anxiously, as he threw the straw head- 
gear he wore on the deck and felt the bright, cold steel 
clip, clip, clip against his lengthened hair. Leslie 
worked steadily over his shapely head with com- 
pressed lips. She looked, at the thick brown ends that 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 155 

fell beneath her manipulation of the scissors, and at 
the smooth, shorn poll that began to show again, and 
something hard and strange seemed to grow in her 
throat. She had often glanced askance at that shorn 
head when it was turned away from her on the 
Aristo. Now she had found it ready to follow her, 
in its raggedness, it was like tempting fate to altar it 
to smartness and superiority again. Nevertheless, 
having undertaken her task she did it to the utmost of 
her ability, for that was in her nature. And if she 
were not a very skilful barber she made a very credit- 
able job of her first essay at hair-cutting. 

“ Samson and Delilah ! ” said Trelawny gaily. 
“ You have shorn me of my strength, Leslie. By 
Jove! but I am glad to feel clean again though! ” He 
passed his hand over his shorn head with a sigh of 
ease. “ Those beastly ends tickling my ears and 
getting down my neck made me feel like a poet 
johnnie.” 

“ Wait a minute,” said Leslie hastily, as he at- 
tempted to rise from his precarious seat, “ I just want 

to clip it close round your temples ” 

“ Have you left me enough to part it on the right 
side?” he asked anxiously. 

“ y es — yes — don’t fuss ! — but I know you al- 
ways looked mouse-coloured at the temples because 

you liked it cut so close ” 

“ How on earth did you know that ! ” 

“ Oh, any one could know that, when you came up 
from the barber’s shop on the Aristo!” snapped the 
girl, turning away abruptly. “You look hideous!” 
she added over her shoulder, and went down the deck 
to Gideon Ivermay’s cabin in a stealthy hunt for 


156 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


more books. Trelawny followed, more slowly, won- 
dering with some resentment if what she said were in 
any way true. Her parting shaft was in no wise bal- 
anced by the coolness to his head, for if he had not 
improved in his lady’s eyes he had indeed lost his 
ugly thatch in vain. He waded into the sour salt 
water in the captain’s cabin, and reaching over the 
weed-grown berth managed to detach the little look- 
ing-glass which he had not been able to carry back 
with him the day before. It responded to his polish- 
ing by showing him his newly shorn head, which was 
really quite respectable in itself, but taken in conjunc- 
tion with his still unshaven face appeared to him 
ludicrous. 

“ That beard must come off, to-night if possible,” 
said Trelawny firmly, and thought with satisfaction 
of Gideon Ivermay’s safety razor, reposing in the 
safest of all the cupboard holes in the cave, by the side 
of the old knife. “ She won’t think me so hideous 
when I’m more like my old self — even in that fellow 
Ivermay’s clothes. I hope they won’t be too short in 

the sleeves ! — one feels a fool with bare wrists ” 

And in the meantime Leslie was standing in Gideon 
Ivermay’s cabin, oblivious to her surroundings, an 
open volume of Browning in her hand. 

‘‘Little girl with the poor coarse hand 
I turned from to a cold, clay cast — 

I have my lesson, understand 
The worth of flesh and blood at last ! 

Nothing but beauty in a Hand? 

Because he could not change the hue, 

Mend the lines and make them true 
To this which met his soul’s demand — 

Would Da Vince turn from you? ... 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


157 


“ This peasant hand that spins the wool 
And bakes the bread, why lives it on, 

Poor and coarse, with beauty gone, — 

What use survives the beauty? Fool! 

“Go, little girl with the poor coarse hand! 

I have my lesson, shall understand/’ 

And a few pages further on — 

“ For then, then what would it matter to me 
That I was the harsh, ill-favoured one?” 

She shut the book guiltily, conscious that she had 
been spending uncounted time over the dear poems, 
as Trelawny’s warning call came across the deck. 

“ Hulloa, Leslie? Where are you? We must be 
getting back — have you got everything you can 
carry ? ” 

“ Yes,” she called back, hastily thrusting the book 
into the rough bundle she had made with a knotted 
blanket, whose contents included the knives and forks, 
a chipped mug, two plates miraculously whole, some 
shapeless cakes of soap, a rough “ housewife ” belong- 
ing to one of the crew, brushes and combs and other 
toilet necessaries that had become luxuries since their 
sojourn on the Island, as well as the books. Tre- 
lawny for his share had the heavier iron pots and 
pans, the medicine case, as much bedding as he could 
carry, and the looking-glass. This latter he had 
swathed in the bedding, and he was as uneasily con- 
scious of its presence as Leslie was of the books. 
Their secret burdens made them unusually obliging 
to each other on the difficulties of landing, and guiltily 
considerate of the tiresome journey that lay between 


158 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

them and the cave they called “ Home ” by tacit con- 
sent. 

“ Are you sure you can carry that stuff all the 
way?” said Trelawny, as they emerged from the 
muddy tracks of the swamp and plunged into the 
bush. “ If you like we’ll leave it under a tree and 
mark the spot, and I’ll come to-morrow and get it 
home.” 

“ Oh, no ! ” said the girl hastily. “ I like to do my 
share. And besides, yours is much heavier! It’s all 
shifted on your left shoulder, too. Hadn’t we better 
repack it for you ? ” 

“ Not necessary — better keep straight on now,” 
said Trelawny, as emphatic as she had been. “ It’s no 
weight after G.I’s. trunk, either. That was a bit of a 
pull ! ” 

“ Yes, I’m so sorry ! ” 

“ Oh, I didn’t regret it. The things are all beyond 
price to us.” 

He did not add that he had spent part of the morn- 
ing investigating the contents, while Leslie was con- 
sidering the best place and use for the more obvious 
articles of clothing, and the tools they had brought the 
day before ; or that at the bottom of the trunk he had 
come on Gideon Ivermay’s dress suit, a little the worse 
for wear and very much the worse for packing. But 
it proved the status of the passenger as one who had 
at some time appeared in broadcloth, however much 
he might have thrust it aside as useless in the Southern 
Pacific. It meant something else to Trelawny’s mind, 
too, a half -shamed project of which he would not 
acknowledge the reason in his own mind — but the 
cock pheasant knows the same instinct when he sports 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 159 

his brightest plumage in the spring to approve himself 
in feminine eyes. 

Leslie was tired when they reached the cave, and 
dropped her burden with a sigh of relief. But she 
warned Trelawny not to touch it, as she had rolled it 
up herself and knew where everything was. “ You 
might break the plates or the mug if you didn’t know,” 
she said, rather vaguely. “ I’ll undo it presently. 
Let’s make up the fire now, while we can, and then I 
want to go and have a bath before supper. It was 
almost too dark for me last night.” 

Trelawny was in no hurry to interfere with her 
treasures; he had his own to harbour safely, and if 
possible unseen, and for this reason he seconded her 
efforts to make the fire burn up, and then good-na- 
turedly offered to cook the supper while she had her 
dip. When he bathed he went down to the rock pools 
and the shelving shore, but by common consent they 
had apportioned a further creek on the other side of 
the headland for the girl’s sole use. It was so shut in 
by jutting rocks as to be almost a bathing-pool at low 
water, and Trelawny had become gradually reassured 
that sharks did not frequent this side of the Island, 
whatever danger from them might lurk on the north 
coast. He called a caution after her however. 

“ Are you sure the tide is not too high? Well, 
don’t stay too late then, and lose your way in the 
dark.” 

“ All right,” she called back, and he watched her 
agile figure spring up the northern headland and dis- 
appear in the level light, for the sun was nearing his 
setting. Then he set to his hoped-for task with fingers 
that almost trembled with excitement — afraid lest 


160 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


the glass should be broken — afraid lest the edge of 
the razor should be too blunt after all! But the fates 
were kind, and the means to the desired end were at 
least ready to his hand 

Perhaps no man ever shaved under odder circum- 
stances, after a three months’ growth of beard. With 
the little square of looking-glass propped up on a shelf 
of rock Trelawny stood under the naked sky in the 
sunset and clipped away the longer hair with the sharp 
medical scissors. Then he solemnly began to shave, 
and if the process was painful he was willing to suffer 
for his personal appearance like any professional 
beauty. When his face once more looked at him out 
of the looking-glass with some resemblance to the 
man he had known, he drew a long breath and col- 
oured like a boy. 

“ I wonder what she will say ? ” he said, wishing 
that the sunburn of recent exposure had not drawn 
such a very emphatic line where the hair had pro- 
tected his lower jaw. It would not be so noticeable 
in the dark, or by the light of the fire, as it would in 
to-morrow’s daylight, any way, and the general effect 
was creditable. “ A first impression is a great 
thing!” said Trelawny, and hurried over his cooking 
to allow himself time for his own ablutions and change 
of attire. 

Leslie had not returned, even by the time he had 
metamorphosed himself, and with a new anxiety he 
placed the supper so that it should keep hot in the 
ashes, and went to seek her. He expected to meet 
her coming down the slope, but she was not there, and 
fearing the descending dusk for her he walked on. 
Her bathing-pool was not five minutes’ walk from the 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 161 


cave, up over the headland and down a steep path- 
way he had clumsily made for her especial use. He 
had reached this pathway, and was hesitating over 
the strain to Gideon Ivermay’s shoes — which were 
too precious to be risked on the rocks — when some- 
thing made him catch his breath and stand still. 

The glow of the sunset was still in the western sky, 
though the light was fast dying, and by its reflection 
he saw the dark blue surface of the pool and a figure 
that seemed as beautiful as Aphrodite’s rising from 
it. Pure white she looked in the twilight, though 
such an olive-skinned girl, and her unflecked limbs 
came up dripping from the water as she leisurely drew 
herself on to the rocks and stood a minute with up- 
raised arms in the perfect joy of perfect health and 
existence. For her health was perfect in this lovely, 
desolate spot, and her body had ripened and devel- 
oped with it until she seemed almost a goddess in her 
innocence of nakedness. The man looked for a mo- 
ment, drawing his breath as if stunned. Then he 
turned and crept away, out of her sight, and felt his 
way back to the glowing fire near the cave with a new 
wonder and awe in his eyes. 

When Leslie came leisurely into the circle of light a 
few minutes later he was sitting in his usual place, the 
chair-like ledge of rock in which he could lean back 
at his ease. She must have been almost at his heels, 
and have only had time to rub herself down with 
some of the bed-linen they had brought from the 
wreck, and then redressed, before she started to re- 
turn. She was wearing the old knickerbockers that 
she had patched and mended as best she might, and 
the sun-bleached muslin shirt; and though she had 
11 


1 62 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


reduced her thick dark hair to some sort of order 
by aid of a brush and comb, it still hung barely to her 
shoulders, and did not much alter her boyish appear- 
ance. There was only the memory of the goddess in 
the pool, and the softer lines of her figure, to betray 
her growing womanhood. 

“ I had such a glorious dip — the water was quite 
cool, and it was so nice to have soap and a kind of 
towel ! ” she began, throwing the wet heap of linen 
down at the mouth of the cave. Then her eyes fell on 
Trelawny, and she stopped short. 

For if there were no very notable alteration in her 
appearance as yet, there was in his. His cropped hair 
was correctly parted and brushed, and his face newly 
shaved save for the small military moustache — so 
much she saw at once. But the metamorphosed head 
she might have withstood, had it not been for his 
clothes. The firelight was lenient to Gideon Iver- 
may’s old dress suit and clean linen, and Trelawny 
had discarded the waistcoat for his own, the one whole 
garment that he had brought safe from the Aristo, 
and the one that at least fitted him. The incongruity 
of his appearance under his present circumstances had 
not struck him until he met the girl’s stare of blank 
surprise, and saw it change to a stormy anger. Then 
he began to feel himself ridiculous, and laughed a 
little nervously. 

“ I took advantage of your bath to dress up,” he 
said hurriedly. Somehow the impression of the god- 
dess in the pool remained to awe him, though his 
material eyes saw only the slight ragged figure that he 
had called “ Tommy.” “ I wanted to celebrate our 
first civilized meal — with plates — and knives and 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 163 

forks ” He broke off helplessly, wondering how 

he had made her angry. If she had laughed he could 
have understood it. But there was suppressed pas- 
sion in the intense quiet with which she turned to the 
cave. 

“ I will get the plates,” was all she said, and began 
to undo the blanket bundle with swift, steady fingers. 
When she came back to the fire she brought not only 
the plates and the mug, but a book tucked under her 
arm. He wondered why. 

“ Come, Leslie, do sit down and let’s make a regular 
orgy of it!” he urged almost pleadingly. “ I wish I 
had caught some fish, but I — it was too late. Why 
didn’t you dress up too? If we have to play at sav- 
ages we may as well amuse ourselves! There were 
heaps of things in that trunk ” 

“ I hadn’t time,” said the girl, with the same ex- 
treme quiet. “ Besides, the appearance of a savage 
suits me well enough. I hope you feel more com- 
fortable ! ” 

Trelawny felt anything but comfortable. He had 
failed in his clumsy attempt to approve himself to her, 
without quite knowing why. She sat down at a little 
distance again, after helping herself to bread-fruit, 
and ostentatiously placing the one mug beside him, 
drinking water herself out of the old calabash she al- 
ways used. He felt further off than ever, instead of 
nearer her woman’s fancy. 

“ I feel rather a fool,” he said shortly. “ I thought 
I should like to see how dress clothes went with a 
desert island — I find it’s a mistake. I shall go back 
to flannels to-morrow ” 

“ You don’t look at all a fool ! ” said Leslie po- 


164 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

litely. “ You look just like your old self, Major 
Trelawny.” 

The sound of his name with its formal prefix for 
the first time from her lips made him look at her 
sharply. It flashed across him now that she never 
called him Miles, though their enforced intimacy had 
made it a natural thing to him to say Leslie, once he 
remembered her sex. She was calmly eating her sup- 
per, nor did she speak to him again until she had had 
her share of bread-fruit and plantain. Then she spoke 
carelessly, over her shoulder, without another glance 
at him. 

“ Will you stir the fire, please, and make a blaze ? 
I want to read.” 

Trelawny did as she asked, mechanically, and 
watched her in moody silence while she opened the 
volume and apparently lost herself in its pages. What 
new mood was this? What had he done so fatally 
wrong? He could not tell that she never read a line to 
understand it, but was recalling a former confidence of 
his while his ankle was still too wrenched to allow him 
to walk. 

“ Edna Carrington ! . . . ‘ She looks at her 

best in her riding habit ’ . . . and he looks at 

his best — as he is now! That is how she thinks of 
him — that is how he may look in the future — with 
her — if there is any other future for us but this! — 
It is Edna Carrington he is remembering when he 
goes back to his old self as he has to-night — and I 
am oceans away from him, though we are pitchforked 
together here. Oh, I hate him and his conventional 
clothes! I hate everybody and everything. . . .” 

The angry sobs rose in her throat and she choked them 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 165 

back. “ He has thrust his own world between us. 
It is just as it was on board the Aristo ■" 

Trelawny turned to the remnants of the meal, and 
began practically taking off his coat and turning back 
his shirt cuffs. She sprang up and was upon him like 
a tiger. 

“ I’ll wash up — you can’t in these clothes ! ” she 
said fiercely. 

He flung down the coat on to his rock seat, as 
pettish as she. 

“ Nonsense ! I am going to wash up as usual. Go 
on with your book.” 

“ You shan’t ! ” she panted, wrenching the plate 
out of his hand. “ Do you think that dress clothes 
grow on this Island? You’ll never get any more even 
to play at civilization in ! ” 

“ Take care! ” he warned, catching the plate as her 
trembling hands nearly let it fall. “ Do you think 
that plates grow on this Island either? You’ll never 
get any more, even to play at smashing them in a 
temper ! ” 

She flung back her head, her brown eyes wide 
with passion, and looked up at him as he stood over 
her, still a violent contrast to her own wild figure 
even in his shirt sleeves. Her breath came hot 
and fast between her parted lips, and she looked 
like a beautiful fury, for the life and colour in her 
more than made amends for her deficiencies of 
dress. 

“ Leslie, what is the matter? ” he said gravely. 

“ I hate you — I hate it all ! ” burst out the girl, 
throwing out her hands toward him to express his 
whole changed appearance. “We were equals before 


1 66 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


— you've altered it — you’ve put me in my place 
again. Oh, I know it is my place! I know how it 
was on the ship, when I never could reach you, never 
should have spoken to you and known you, save for 

this ” Her splendid, free gesture took in the 

whole of the night-shrouded bush and the glimmer- 
ing shore. “ Do you know what I felt when I first 
came back to life and found you looking at me? ” she 
hurried on, breathlessly. “ I was glad — glad that 
it had all happened, because I was alone with you here, 
and you would have to know me ! ” 

He remembered that look in her eyes on her return 
to consciousness, a strange look that he could not 
decipher. He did not understand it all now, but he 
saw one thing clearly — her jealousy of his past life 
and the old associations that came with his fatal “ dress- 
ing-up.” His face flushed a little in the firelight, as 
if with a reflection of the passion in hers. Then he 
stooped with an awkward movement, and set the con- 
tested plate carefully on one side ; but when he turned 
to the girl with freed hands she had slipped down at 
his feet and was sobbing bitterly. 

“ Oh, don’t look at me — don’t notice what I say ! ” 
she sobbed bitterly. “If you knew what my life has 
been! There was no colour or beauty in it — you’ve 
had all these things — you don’t know! And it was 
like sharing them to know you, and to hear you 
talk ” 

Her voice trailed off into tears from her own self- 
pity, and there was shame, too, for what she had said, 
or made him believe. She buried her face in her 
hands, under the thick veil of her falling hair, and 
the dancing firelight played over the abased little 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 167 

figure, pathetic in its rags and loneliness and confes- 
sion of false ideals and aspirations. 

Trelawny sat down in the rock seat, and drew her 
towards him with a strength that was not to be de- 
nied. But she did not resist ; her body rather inclined 
towards him, until she knelt between his knees, with 
her face still hidden, and her figure quivering with 
her own feelings. She could not see his eyes, but she 
could hear his voice, though it was little more than a 
whisper. 

“ Leslie — dear little girl — nothing could ever part 
us now — don’t you know that ? Can’t you feel that 
I shouldn’t let you go — even if we are rescued? 
Come here — and be comforted ” 

He lifted her into his arms, her head pressed down 
against his shoulder, and pulled her hands away. The 
fire leapt and laughed, wickedly, and showed the two 
faces nearer each other. Then the flame mercifully 
died down and left them the dark for their first kiss. 
But it was no comfort to Leslie Mackelt. Every drop 
of blood in her body seemed drawn up to her lips, and 
then to surge back again into her heart, making her 
nerves throb with pain. Her experience of being 
kissed hitherto had been limited to her aunt’s cold 
peck upon her forehead, and her brother’s matter-of- 
fact touch upon her cheek, and even the latter had 
ceased since she had been considered grown-up. If 
it was not seemly that relations of opposite sexes 
should kiss each other after they became men and 
women, there was no shred of excuse in her creed 
and upbringing for the long pressure of Miles Tre- 
lawny’s lips upon her own, the sick thrill that made 
her long to run away and yet unable to move. It was 


1 68 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


not pleasure — it was all pain. And yet for a minute 
she lay there, wishing that she could die now and 
never have to repent. 

It was the cry of a bat that broke the spell, and 
made the girl wrench herself out of the man’s clasp 
— a little plaintive cry, so like a bird’s, as the unseen 
body whirled by in the darkness. Leslie stood up 
giddily, with a new weakness in all her limbs, and 
pushed Trelawny away from her as she might have 
done the visible presence of evil. 

“ Don’t speak to me — don’t follow me — let me 
go now, for God’s sake ! ” she said incoherently, and 
he let her go, perhaps because his faculties were as 
little under control as hers, perhaps because it was 
such a little way that she could flee from him in the 
green prison of the Island. She ran back to the cave, 
stumbling over familiar stones that she had perfectly 
avoided an hour ago, and hid herself in the darkness 
of her own inner recess, her face buried in her arms, 
her whole body trembling and cowering into the soft 
bed of dried grass. She knew no more than his kiss 
had taught her — an inarticulate language, awakening 
shamed senses, but giving no definite warning. All 
her abasement was for having outraged her own 
woman’s modesty, according to the creed she had been 
taught wherein a man’s touch alone was unpermissible 
to a woman, without further reason; and the added 
wrong to the bodiless, unknown Edna Carrington, 
whose existence was merely a name out here in the 
Southern Seas, but who held a claim to this man that 
not all .the casting-away on earth could break, to 
Leslie Mackelt’s sense of honour. He was bound 
to this woman on the other side of the globe, and 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 169 

though they might never meet again the link held fast 
without mutual consent to break it. Leslie could 
not sleep for many restless hours that night. She 
tossed and turned, and her body felt hot and strange, 
as if a fever had attacked her. It was a horrible 
thing that she had done, and she was suffering her 
just deserts. Morality, and not Nature, bore the 
blame in Leslie’s creed. 

But Trelawny went down to the shore and paced 
up and down on the smooth sand, for he was a man 
and he knew and understood. The shoes hurt his feet 
after his three months’ freedom, and he kicked them 
aside and went softly in his borrowed socks, but the 
print of his feet bore testimony to a restlessness as 
great as Leslie’s. 

“ I won’t do her any harm,” he reiterated to him- 
self again and again, as if to reassure his own honour. 
“ Poor little girl ! . . . She is more at my mercy 
than she knows — with her ignorance — and all Na- 
ture to tempt us. . . . Poor little girl! . . . 
I should be a brute — and there is just the chance of 
rescue. ... I must cling to that. If we once 
lose hope we may as well go straight to the devil. 
. . . No, I won’t! I won’t! . . . She 
doesn’t even understand herself — much less me. 

. . . I’m only a man, but I wouldn’t harm a hair 

of her head. . . . It’s going to be the very deuce, 

though ! . . .” 

And the silence and the sweetness and the longing 
had grown to be tangible, insistent things. 


CHAPTER XI 


“ Virtue, how frail it is ! 

Friendship, too rare; 

Love, how it sells poor bliss 
For proud despair.” — Shelley. 

T RELAWNY began the log-hut the next morn- 
ing. He was up earlier than usual, though sun- 
rise generally found him astir, and by the time that 
the Island was glittering with new light he was hard 
at work, measuring a level piece of land and making 
the ground-plan of his house. The fallen cocoanut 
that had saved his life when he was flung on shore 
was still lying there, save that its crest had been used 
for firing, and he decided to make the two portals of 
the doorway out of it, as a kind of poetical justice; 
but he was loath, otherwise, to cut down any of the 
kindly palms, and decided to have his walls and roof- 
ing of bamboo, and the corner posts of a kind of 
logwood that he vaguely recognized as well suited to 
building purposes, being unproductive of food. It 
was a “ one man show/’ to use his own phraseology, 
and he was obliged to limit his exertions to the lighter 
kinds of timber; but he had, anyhow, a couple of axes 
whose presence on board the Golden Gate he con- 
sidered amongst the best of his discoveries, besides a 
formidable saw. 

As the sun rose the light caught the crests of the 
cocoanuts and the mass of bush that luxuriated almost 
170 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 17 1 

down to the white sands, and struck out notes of 
purer green and gold in the foliage. The warm cliffs 
turned pink and buff-coloured under the light, and 
sky and sea were one vast molten turquoise. Then a 
bird called to his mate from the opening of the Gorge, 
and a pair of lizards darted across the ground where 
Trelawny stood, puffing out the exquisite orange bag 
beneath their throats, and flinging up wise heads to 
the morning. The scent of the wild orange and the 
logwood flowers came down from the higher ground 
and drifted out to sea. It was all rather like the 
breaking of a morning in Eden. Small wonder if 
Trelawny felt as Adam, and looked for Eve to people 
his universe. 

She came with the lengthening rays, a half-shamed 
figure emerging from the cave, with a newly fashioned 
skirt hanging to her knee and transforming her from 
boy to girl. Somehow his heart leapt at the conces- 
sion, after the failure of overnight’s dress clothes, and 
something of the new feeling in him was in his eyes as 
he looked at her. But he did not go to meet her, or 
speak until she was close to him. He stood on the 
foundations of the new house he meant to build — 
where the threshold of the door would be — and 
awaited her, almost tongue-tied, struggling for some 
expression that should reassure her and yet confirm 
last night’s betrayal. It seemed to him almost like a 
consecration of a new life between them when she 
joined him by the entrance to the dwelling-place he had 
raised already in his mind — their house, a mutual 
habitation for the enforced life together that began to 
seem desirable despite its appalling exile. 


172 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

“ Leslie ! ” he said at last, and there was a little catch 
in his voice. “ Won't you say good morning to me ? ” 

She stood beside him, almost stiffly, and there was 
something strained and tense in her figure, betraying 
that all the muscles were tightened. Her hands were 
twisted together in a close grip, as if the moral effort 
to speak were too great without some physical expres- 
sion, and her eyes looked not at him but at the wilder- 
ness of beauty beyond — the splendid mass of green 
that was fresh and dewy in the sunrise, and the warm 
blue sky just filling with lazy little clouds in some up- 
per current of air that did not disturb the serenity of 
the morning. Nature is innocent enough, even when 
she allures with her beauty and rejoices in the instinct 
of generation. 

“ I want to say ” began the girl harshly, and he 

saw her moisten her lips as a martyr might at the 
stake. “ I know I was very wrong last night. I am 
sorry — I forgot ” — her voice faltered, and then she 
forced it on — “ I forgot that other girl — Edna ” 

Of all things that she could have urged against their 
new relations this was the least expected. He had 
looked for her to draw back at first, frightened by the 
new experience, deterred by some absurd scruple of 
her narrow creed. But that she should simply place 
his honour as a barrier between them, took him com- 
pletely by surprise. The tie seemed to him so far-off 
and impossible that it was almost like a legend. Even 
the hope of rescue had never been immediately con- 
nected in his mind with his marriage and a future with 
Edna Carrington; he had merely craved for it as an 
escape for this living death of solitude. Once again 
he was almost abashed by the extreme single-minded- 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 173 

ness of Leslie Mackelt’s outlook on life. Her creed 
might indeed be narrow, but it kept the plain ideals of 
honour, chivalry, honesty, truth, and the obligation 
to do good, constantly before her. That she marred 
the achieving of her object, that her ideal of doing 
good was circumscribed by bigotry and error, could 
not obscure the pure principle of the girl’s earnestness. 
For a minute he found nothing to say. 

“ I did not understand myself — I said things I 
ought to have kept back,” said Leslie confusedly in his 
silence. “ I don’t know what you must think of me ! 
I am very, very sorry. We won’t ever say anything 
like that again — we won’t ever refer to it ! ” 

“ I don’t think we said very much! ” said Trelawny 
at last, dryly. 

“ No, but we — but you — but I ” she stam- 

mered, and her distressed face crimsoned at the dis- 
turbing memory. It softened the resentment in him 
at once. He could see her struggling — poor little 
girl! — against a thing he understood so well! 

“ Is it because I kissed you? ” he said softly. 

“ Yes ! ” She spoke under her breath. 

“ And you didn’t like it? ” For the life of him he 
could not resist that irony, knowing how much she had 
liked it. But she did not answer, and his heart smote 
him. 

“ Leslie, dear,” he said gently, “ I won’t do anything 
you don’t like — I won’t ask you for anything you 
don’t want to give. But do think! Here we are 
stranded, out of the world, away from its conven- 
tionalities and standards, forced into a kind of un- 
official honeymoon — how are we to keep to the re- 
strictions that would come naturally if we were back 


174 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

in civilization? We can’t run away from danger, re- 
member — we must be together day after day and 
month after month — perhaps all of life that is left us. 
You may have the best intentions, but you will find 
it impossible not to long for the very thing you have 
forbidden. We had much better let it come naturally, 
and accept it, and — and be as happy as we can under 
the circumstances. I never thought I should be happy 
in this damned island!” said poor Trelawny, looking 
round at the beautiful background of his prison ; “ but, 
by Jove ! I can, if you will only let me ! ” 

He had unconsciously moved closer to her, and was 
half uncertainly touching the thick dark hair that she 
had tied back from her face. “ No one could blame 
us ! ” he whispered, as his caressing fingers reached 
the small flat ear and the warm neck. “ And as to 
that other allegiance — how can we consider it here ? 
She may think I am dead, and be married herself, for 
all I shall ever know ! ” 

The girl flung up her head with a kind of shocked 
horror. “ She couldn’t — so soon ! ” she gasped, and 
he did not see the compliment implied. That any 
woman could console herself for Miles Trelawny 
seemed impossible enough to Leslie; certainly Edna 
could not do so for years and years ! “ And besides 

— it doesn’t make any difference — you are bound,” 
she said with a touch of obstinate despair. “If we 
were rescued now, and went back to the ordinary 
world, wouldn’t you return to her?” 

He hesitated. The speculation seemed so useless, 
and yet so tiresome. " I don’t know what I should do 

— I can’t imagine being rescued, I’ve begun to lose 
hope,” he said almost roughly, perhaps forgetting that 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 175 

he had told himself that that was the shortest way to 
the devil. “ We can only go on from day to day and 
endure, and try not to think, or we shall go mad. And 
if — if there is a chance of something more than con- 
tent, of being reconciled to it, why shouldn’t we take 
it? We have only each other in all the world.” 

He made a sudden movement and held out his 
arms, the light in his eyes making them warm and 
blue. 

“ I won’t lose heart — I won’t believe we shall die 
here ! ” said the girl desperately. “ I am sure there 
is the rest of your life for you, somehow, to live out as 
you planned it. We must cling to that — we must 
never forget it. And we must live as if it were al- 
ways the next thing that was going to happen, so that 
we shall have nothing to regret when it comes.” 

A certain sullenness settled down on the man’s face. 
He had meant as well as she the night before, but her 
very resistance roused the opposite strain in him — it 
was like arguing with his own conscience. He felt 
the uselessness of it all too, from a certain practical 
matter-of-fact trait in him that put common sense 
above ideals. He meant to do her no harm — he had 
told himself so over and over again — and he felt that 
the bogey of honour she raised between them was a 
strained sense under the circumstances, and that they 
were both slightly ridiculous and melodramatic. 
Nevertheless he must let her have her way and find 
out her error, all the more so because he was half 
angry at the rejection of his advances. 

“ Very well — we can take a mutual oath to treat 
each other as dummies, if you like,” he said shortly. 

“ Have it your own way! I give you my word I will 


176 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


never speak to you as I did last night, or touch you 
until you ask me ! ” 

“ That will be never,” said the girl with an echo of 
despair in her voice. Had she been older or less lim- 
ited in experience she would have doubted her own 
resolve, as the worst of all temptations; but for all her 
study of her Bible she had not learnt the grim truth 
of that warning to take heed lest we fall. 

Trelawny went back to his work in silence, and the 
girl, with a heavy heart, prepared their breakfast. 
Being a woman, it was some solace to her to apportion 
the one mug as well as a plate to Trelawny — a con- 
cession that he hardly noticed. 

They had discovered both tea and coffee on the 
Golden Gate in small canisters that would be easy to 
transport, because a large canister once opened is lia- 
ble to turn musty or spoil on board a sailing ship in 
those latitudes; but the exiles were in no great haste 
to bring such luxuries away from the ship, for there 
was the desperate feeling hanging over their consump- 
tion that each inroad would hopelessly reduce the store, 
and it was a task for Tantalus to decide how it should 
be eked out before the arrival of that phantom ship 
that never arrived to rescue them. Had the coffee ber- 
ries been in the raw state Trelawny would have made 
a bid for fortune and planted them, trusting to the 
wonderful fertility of the soil; but the coffee was 
ground, and all hope of future gain from the ship’s 
stores was destroyed by modern advantages in the 
way of carrying semi- or wholly prepared food. The 
one improvement in their present meal was that by 
means of the saucepan Leslie was able to boil some 
sweet potatoes that Trelawny had brought from the 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 177 

interior of the Island, instead of roasting them. Even 
such poor differences in food made a welcome change. 

“ I shall go over to the ship this afternoon,” he 
said during breakfast. “ But there is no occasion for 
you to come.” It was his only remark throughout the 
meal. 

Leslie hesitated. Yesterday, perhaps only an hour 
ago, she would have insisted on accompanying him, 
and have frankly stated that she would rather share 
any chance of danger than imagine him running a risk 
alone. Now there was the personal reason for keep- 
ing apart from him, and she was afraid to protest lest 
he was leaving her behind with a purpose. She was 
beginning to acknowledge the snare of propinquity, 
but she saw with despair whither her own decision 
anent their relations was leading her. If he chose to 
undertake any excursion and to leave her to await his 
return she would have to do so, though with breaking 
heart and a soul tortured with anxiety. This was the 
first time in her life that she had really experienced the 
woman’s portion, to wait and endure, and the first 
taste of it was intolerable. 

Trelawny spent the earlier working hours in chop- 
ping timber for his new house, until the sun became 
too hot to do anything but rest. Later, he set out for 
the bay and the wreck, familiarity with the place hav- 
ing enabled him to shorten his journey considerably. 
He only wanted to reach her at low tide, and to return 
before he was cut off and had to swim for it; but the 
intervening hours were the longest that Leslie Mackelt 
ever spent. She knew that he was leaving her inten- 
tionally, and it was her business to help rather than 
hinder him ; but when he was gone she sat down on the 
12 


178 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

lonely, lovely shore and stared with tortured eyes at 
the mocking beauty of the bay, the sea-birds wheeling 
over the creaming reef, and the empty blue sky. Was 
this kind of thing to go on indefinitely? Was she to 
forfeit even the dear companionship that was beyond 
all value to her, for the sake of an unknown woman 
and a shred of honour? And if the present strain 
were ended by some remote chance of rescue, must 
she go back into the living world with the estrange- 
ment still unhealed, and be shut out of his life again, 
completely, by circumstances? It seemed an unfair 
burden that he had bound on her shoulders, and yet 
she could not blame him — he was only doing what she 
had decreed. The woman gives sentence of death to 
her own heart; but it is the man who elects her as 
executioner, and puts the knife into her hand. 

As the days passed the wall of constraint between 
them seemed to increase with each silent hour! The 
man had the best of it, because his practical common- 
sense taught him to turn his attention to work and the 
distraction it gave him, as he had done before. The 
girl moped and brooded when not forced by necessity 
to her share of the struggle for existence, and read 
her books in the lovely, maddening solitude. Her 
study of Swinburne and Browning and Fitzgerald 
did not help her much; but she had never had their 
work in her possession before, and glutted herself with 
poetry, applying such as she liked best to her own 
particular case and Trelawny’s. In particular she 
read and reread “ The Rubaiyat/’ because it was the 
one poem from which she had heard Trelawny quote, 
and his knowledge of its wonderful quatrains filled 
her with an increased respect for his mentality that it 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


i/9 


is probable he hardly deserved. For Leslie did not 
know that the majority of men may be divided into 
three sections — those who do not read at all, and 
those who read either Omar Khyyam or Marcus Au- 
relius. The Khyyams are perhaps a little more nu- 
merous than the Aurelians, but it is nearly certain that 
a small edition of one or the other will share honours 
with technical treatises and the daily paper. 

When they met at meals Trelawny talked of his 
plans and the improvements the discovery of the wreck 
had given him for their mutual comfort ; and she felt 
she hated any amelioration of a lot that had begun to 
wear a rose-coloured aspect before she sternly turned 
her back upon it herself, but most of all she hated the 
little timber structure over which Trelawny laboured 
so faithfully. It absorbed him from radiant morn- 
ing to rainbow eve, and she could have found it in her 
heart to tear it down and despoil it as she had once 
tried to do the beacon. She was almost jealous of the 
senseless timbers and the solid supports, and looked 
forward resentfully to the final thatching of the roof 
with palm and wild cane. She knew by instinct that 
one reason for Trelawny’s steady work was that he 
meant to sleep there if she would not do so, that he 
wanted to remove himself as far as possible from her 
by night even as he did by going on excursions by 
day. While they had their cave-rooms side by side 
there was no getting away from the other’s presence, 
for the silent hours of darkness at least. If she lis- 
tened she could hear his even breathing through the 
night, and to know that he was there was a pain and 
pleasure both at once. In her girl’s mind she did not 
assign any darker reason for his desire to be further 


x8o THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


off — the unknown torture of a man’s yearning that 
he dared not dwell upon. Even Trelawny himself 
perhaps hardly acknowledged it. His reason for 
building a hut was — practical again ! — the obvious 
one that the cave was good for storage, and they had 
now so many valuable possessions to store that he 
must find some outside shelter for himself. He did 
not believe that the sea washed right up to the back 
of the cave, except in exceptional storms or high tides; 
but if it showed signs of so doing he must enlarge his 
house, and remove the articles brought from the 
Golden Gate again. He ceremoniously offered the 
use of the new hut to Leslie as a woman, and she with 
equal curtness declined it. “ I am quite comfortable 
in the inner cave on the dried grass,” she said. “ I 
hate log huts ! ” After that it was easy to shrug his 
shoulders and build for himself. 

And the silence, and the sweetness, and the longing 
went on as before. 

The mending of a saucepan had always seemed such 
a simple thing when undertaken by an old man with 
an apparatus like a walking coffee-stall and a wheel 
that whizzed. There was an old man in the village of 
which his father was Squire, who had been a familiar 
figure in Trelawny’s childhood. He had gone about 
crying “ Knives to grind ? ” but people had brought 
him other things to renovate besides knives, and he 
seemed able to doctor pots and pans quite as well. 
In those days he had not seemed a particularly gifted 
old man to Miles, but sitting on the beach of a desert 
island, with a rusty broken saucepan between his knees, 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 181 


Major Trelawny came to think that the old knife- 
grinder had been endowed by the gods. 

“ Damn the thing ! How did he fill up the 
cracks? ” he said, looking ruefully at the injury in the 
saucepan’s side where the metal had worn thin and 
the rust had eaten it away. “ He’d got some beastly 
sort of solder. How do you make solder? I know 
there’s resin in it ! ” 

He flung the saucepan from him with a sense of im- 
potent rage, and the thing bowled over along the 
smooth sand and took refuge in a rock pool, where it 
bobbed up and down derisively. “ It’s no use your 
taking to the water!” said Trelawny, shaking his fist 
at it. “You’re leaking now — you know you are. 
You’ll sink in a minute.” 

He turned his back upon the saucepan as if aban- 
doning it to its doom, and took up a plate of copper 
and a heavy hammer that he had brought from the 
Golden Gate. The metal was uninjured and burnished 
as if with the energy of half a dozen housemaids, for 
in those waters ships are copper-bottomed with inten- 
tion. There is something in the chemical ingredients 
of the South Pacific which acts upon copper like a 
burnisher, but never corrodes as it does other metals, 
and if you strip the plates off a ship with great care 
you may get them clean away without injury — as 
Trelawny had found. 

The Golden Gate, with her bows high in air, had 
exposed her copper plates to Trelawny’s depredations, 
and he had brought one away with a vague idea of 
encasing the saucepan. Now he began to bend and 
coax the hard metal to some shape that should dis- 


182 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


tantly resemble a cup, or any utensil that would hold 
water, and as he worked the interest of the task grew 
upon him and the natural instinct of man to bend the 
earth’s products to his will — to overcome the solid re- 
sistance of mere substance. The copper yielded stub- 
bornly, but the sides of the plate began to curve up- 
wards without cracking, and then with the hammer 
Trelawny began to beat the bottom downwards, though 
what he really needed was a wooden pestle for the 
job. 

It was a very elementary substitute for the saucepan, 
but he began to see that in time he might be able to 
turn the most unpromising materials to his service. 
The log cabin had seemed a hopeless problem at first, 
and he was bound to confess that the saucepan had 
proved far more disheartening than any building of 
log cabins. He caught sight of it again, bobbing about 
in the rock pool as if laughing at him, and cursed it, 
feeling like a fool. Then his eyes lit on the copper 
plate which was really assuming the vague outline of a 
bowl, and he felt his self-esteem reinstated. For he 
had discovered a great principle of nature, that if you 
cannot mend a thing it is better to let it quite alone 
and start fresh to create a substitute. 

He had just arrived at this discovery, and was be- 
coming absorbed in his new creation, when he was 
aware of a light step that he knew, and that made him 
tingle the while he preserved an utter indifference 
outwardly. It was not often that she willingly ap- 
proached him now, and he had thought that she was 
gathering grass and fern to dry in the sun and renew 
the bedding in the cave. This was woman’s work, 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 183 

and he had felt justified in allowing her to use it as an 
excuse for getting away in her turn, since he was near 
at hand this afternoon. 

The soft tread of bare feet stopped at his shoulder, 
and she spoke in the quiet, dragging tone that he was 
beginning to know. It always sounded very tired, 
and made his heart throb, half with resentment, half 
with pity — pity for them both. 

“ I want to speak to you,” she said. 

“Yes?” he responded carelessly, still intent on the 
copper plate. “ I wish you would suggest some way 
of making this into a saucepan! I can’t mend that 
old thing down there in the water, and I’m trying to 
make a new one. But it has no handle ” 

“ I think you have not rounded it enough. Try 
dinting the sides as well as the bottom,” she said, and 
he felt her stoop to inspect his work, and shivered 
slightly. “Will you look here?” she added after a 
minute. 

Then he turned his head reluctantly, and saw that 
she was carrying one of their few precious pencils (all 
the ink on board the Golden Gate had dried beyond 
hope of liquifying again), and had also torn a leaf out 
of one of her books, which she was offering to him. 

“ Will you see if this is legal? ” she said. “ Can I 
make it legal ? ” 

He took the sheet in some surprise, and read what 
was written: 

“ If I should die on this island, I wish to give and 
bequeath one half of my property to my brothers, 
and the other half to Miles Trelawny, Major in the 
Carbines.” 


1 84 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


“ What docs this mean ? ” he asked gently. 

“ I thought/' she began, and then faltered, “ I 
thought if by any chance I died here and you were 
rescued ” Then she broke off and flushed un- 

comfortably. “Don’t you see?” she said. 

“ No, I don’t,” he answered bluntly. “ You are no 
more likely to die than I am, so long as we can find 
food and shelter. If one dies, the other will probably 
die.” 

“ You said it was a great deal of money — that I 
was heiress to a huge fortune,” she interrupted illog- 
ically. “ Why shouldn’t you have it ? You would 
enjoy it much more than I ! ” 

“ But my dear child,” he retorted, “ I am just as 
much a castaway as you are. Why should I be res- 
cued more than you ? ” 

She did not answer for a minute, but stood look- 
ing down at the sand which she fretted with her bare 
foot. 

“You might ” she said at last. “Men are 

stronger than women, anyway. If anything happened 
to kill one of us ” 

“ Something happened on board the Aristo ” he 
reminded her. “ But it didn’t kill either of us — not 
even you ! ” 

“ It would have done, if you had not fed and nursed 
me.” 

“ Possibly.” 

“ I owe my present existence to you,” she said, ob- 
viously catching at a new argument. “ Please let me 
make what return I can. I want to give you the 
money. Can I make it legal ? ” 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 185 

He shook his head, almost smiling. 

“ How could you ? There are no witnesses — only 
the beneficiary under the will, even if it were a will. 
And your family might object under the score of un- 
due influence, even if they did not suggest that I had 
murdered you to obtain the money ! ” He tried to 
speak lightly. 

“ They would not — my brothers are so conscien- 
tious that if they were sure it was my meaning and 
my last request, they would carry it out somehow ! ” 
she said eagerly. “ Do please show me how I can 
make it sure ! ” 

Trelawny put down the embryo saucepan and rose 
to his feet, towering over her in rather a threatening 
attitude, though he did not intend it. 

“ Look here/’ he said firmly, “ in the first place you 
are not going to die — it is morbid to talk of it. In 
the second, it is absurd to talk of leaving our property 
to each other, when as far as we can see no one will 
ever know that we were thrown up here alive. And 
in the third, I could not accept such a bequest, though 
all the lawyers in the world were sitting round us to 
draw up your will ! ” 

She turned away, looking like a disappointed child. 
There were so evidently tears in her eyes that he 
caught her by the shoulder and held her back. 

“ Leslie,” he said rather breathlessly, “ what is the 
matter ? Why do you think you are going to die ? ” 

“ I don’t think so,” she said sullenly. “ Worse luck ! ” 

“ Then why do you talk such nonsense? You look 
much better than when you came to the Island — I 
have told you so, often.” 


1 86 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


She brushed her hand furtively across her eyes, and 
tried to shake herself free. 

“ Let me go ! ” she said, catching her breath. “ I 
am sorry you won’t let me do what I want — it 
wouldn’t hurt you ! ” 

“ But why do you want it? ” 

“ Because I ” She looked up wildly for an in- 

stant, and the brown eyes, drowned in tears, said, “ Be- 
cause I love you ! ” Only her lips kept truce with 
the task she had set herself. They were hopelessly 
silent. 

For a minute the two looked despairingly at each 
other, the man begging for leave to put the pretty, 
tragic avowal into words, the girl refusing herself the 
impulse to put her arms round his neck and let him 
feel and see the meaning of her foolish, offered for- 
tune. Then his hand dropped from her shoulder. 
She had not taken off her embargo and said that he 
might speak. 

“ Because I am a fool ! ” said Leslie Mackelt bit- 
terly, and turned back to the cave. 

Trelawny sat down to the forgotten saucepan, and 
pondered how a once useful article — such as a heart, 
for instance ! — can be replaced or repaired when hope- 
lessly injured. The prospect, either for that organ 
or the saucepan, did not look hopeful. He whistled 
drearily : 

“ Oh, maid, what have you done ? 

You’ve broken my heart, and I had but one ! ” 

wondering if Leslie knew the song, and could fit the 
words. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 187 

Then he said “ Damn ! ” and it didn’t relieve him at 
all. 

The girl climbed into the inner cave, lay down on 
the sweet dried grass, and cried. 

This time it was the woman who had the advantage. 


CHAPTER XII 


“ Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before 
I swore — but was I sober when I swore? 

And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand 
My threadbare Penitence a-pieces tore.” 

Omar Khayyam. 

T HERE are various ways of building a log-hut, 
and some of them are quite scientific; but these 
latter presuppose facilities equal to those of the Swiss 
Family Robinson, or a railway line that leads to 
civilization. Trelawny’s position was rather that of 
the Israelites when ordered to make bricks without 
straw, for though he had plenty of bamboo to build 
with he was ambitious of something more solid than 
the ordinary bamboo hut, something that should resist 
the assaults even of hurricanes. For the straight wood 
of the uprights he could find nothing more adaptable 
than the species of logwood that flourished exceed- 
ingly all over the Island, but it was painfully branchy. 
For days it seemed to him that he did nothing but lop 
branches, and when the stripped trunks began at last 
to look like the solid supports he had in his mind he 
felt as Sysiphus might have felt if he had ever got his 
stone over the top of the hill. The larger trees grow- 
ing in the vicinity of the cave were beyond his strength 
to haul or handle, as he was practically alone ; but the 
logwood, though more solid than bamboo, was a small 
tree, and those he picked out light enough for his pur- 
pose. 


188 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 189 

His building plan was the simplest on record, and is 
the first that suggests itself to the mind of any boy 
who becomes a squatter during half-holidays in the 
back garden. Miles Trelawny was beginning to think 
of his own capacity indeed as nearly limited to the 
schoolboy’s. Everything that he knew of use to him 
had been learned in his school days, from climbing 
trees to using his sling, and of the fine fellow he had 
rather thought himself since he joined his regiment 
there remained nothing save a craving to shave that 
had made him ridiculous. 

His hut was the hut of triangular corners — that is, 
three supports well sunk into the ground just wide 
enough to allow the logs to rest between them at right 
angles to each other. But because he wanted some- 
thing stronger than the usual bamboo hut he doubled 
his walls, and made his uprights of the logwood, some 
seven foot high at the corners of the hut, and nine or 
ten for the three running through the centre of his 
room on which to support the cross battens of the 
roof. These latter uprights he scooped out at the top 
in the shape of a half circle to make a resting-place 
for his bamboos, but he could not afford to use the 
length or sized rafters that he coveted on account of 
the weight ; and even as it was he was obliged to press 
Leslie into the service, to her unfeigned disgust. 

“ I can’t see any necessity for a hut at all,” she said 
sulkily, when he proposed that she should lend what 
slight strength she had to get the bamboos into posi- 
tion. “ The caves did well enough.” 

“The caves might be flooded in a high tide,” Tre- 
lawny answered steadily. “ And we have not room 
for storage.” 


190 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


“ Then let’s leave the things on the Golden Gate. 
They are safe enough there.” 

“ Nonsense, Leslie ! ” The man was beginning to 
feel the irritant of the woman’s lack of reason. “ You 
know we agreed that another storm might drift her out 
to sea again.” 

The girl’s delicate brows contracted ominously. He 
would not look at the little mutinous face and the 
pouting lips. Perhaps he feared his resolution break- 
ing down more than she. “ Well, anyhow, if you had 
to build your stupid old house, I wish you’d do it 
alone ! It’s not a woman’s work ! ” she said with child- 
ish rudeness. Sometimes it relieved her to gibe at 
him. 

He went rather white, but he kept his temper and 
his determination. “ I am very sorry, but you must 
do your share,” he said. “ It is not a question of man 
and woman, but of two human beings fighting for ex- 
istence. I won’t overtax your strength, but you will 
come and learn to haul on a rope to-morrow.” 

He spoke with authority, and the significance of the 
“ man and woman ” phrase silenced her. It was her 
own decree, and she could not refuse to play the game. 
On the morrow she followed him out to the banks of 
the stream where the bamboos flourished, and together 
they hauled them back to the level land above the cave. 
The girl worked silently, with the noose of a rope 
slipped over her shoulders, pulling with all her small 
weight against the solid load. It made Trelawny sick 
to see her pant and strain, and when they slackened 
the rope the mark of it that he knew had left its im- 
pression on her soft flesh through the thin shirt. But 
she must do it — she must do it! He had a kind of 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 191 

savage satisfaction in not sparing her as a woman, and 
forcing her to help to build the hut where one of 
them should sleep at night, beyond the torture of near- 
ness. 

Trelawny dug the holes for his uprights by himself, 
and sweated as Adam did when he first turned the 
earth; but he demanded the girl’s assistance again to 
help swing the logwood supports into position, and to 
get them solidly driven into the holes. This was the 
hardest part of his job as far as manual labour was 
concerned, for the bamboo walls presented no great 
difficulty. The doorposts and lintel he contrived from 
the fallen palm as he had promised himself that he 
would; but when it came to the door itself he was 
puzzled for hinges, unless he took them off the cabin 
doors of the Golden Gate. It was Leslie who came to 
the rescue, unwillingly enough. 

“ You needn’t take all that trouble!” she said, un- 
able to resist a stab at his laborious methods. “ The 
hinges would be awfully difficult to fix, anyway. I’ve 
seen a better door in the Bush.” 

“Well?” he said curtly. He did not greatly be- 
lieve in her experiences, and his tone suggested in- 
credulity. 

“ You get a broken bottle,” she said slowly, with 
aggravating deliberation. “And you sink the lower 
half in the earth, upside down — are you listening?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then you make a point to your doorpost and fit 
the pointed end into your broken bottle — let it rest 
in it. The upper end you simply fit into a hole in the 
lintel, and the door swings on its own axis — see ? ” 

Trelawny was staring at her by this time, in open 


192 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


amazement. Ridiculous as her description was he 
could see how the thing was done. “ By Jove! ” was 
all he said. But he made his door bushman fashion, 
and it swung in its broken bottle with great simplicity. 
Fortunately there were plenty of broken bottles on the 
Golden Gate. 

After that experience he was more respectful to the 
girl’s knowledge. 

“ Leslie,” he said, when the walls of the hut were 
finished, “ what do they floor the huts with in Aus- 
tralia? ” 

“ Ant-heap,” said the girl laconically. “ And you 
throw the ends from the tea-cups on it — I don’t quite 
know why. Perhaps it helps to cement it. Anyhow, 
it’s as hard as concrete.” Then the corners of her 
mouth quivered with girlish amusement at a reminis- 
cence. “ When Donald and I had been living in the 
Bush for some time we got used to their ways,” she 
volunteered. “ But when we got back to a town and 
we were asked out to have tea with a minister’s wife, 
Donald forgot where he was, and I saw him toss the 
end of his tea out on to the carpet ! It was so funny ! ” 

The breach was healed for the minute by their mu- 
tual laughter. There is no greater friend to peace 
than merriment without bitterness. 

“ There is no ant-heap here,” said Trelawny rue- 
fully. “ So I shall have to be content with a wood 
floor.” 

But he got his boards well-seasoned from the 
schooner, and began to consider the problem of his 
roof. This was a serious matter, for he had to plan 
for the weight of his cross battens and rafters, and 
though Leslie could lend a hand again it was no light 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


193 


task for a single man to get the gentle slope that he 
wanted, for he intended to thatch with palm and dried 
grass, and to weight it all with big stones to resist the 
heavy winds. Such roofing he had seen often enough 
in tropical countries ; it was only a question of making 
the framework strong enough. The principal weight 
rested on the three centre posts whose forked, upper 
ends supported the bamboo ridge-pole, but he found 
them of the greatest use also to lean a ship’s ladder 
against that he might work at his rafters from below 
as well as above. Man is a tool-using animal, as Tre- 
lawny found. With the implements taken from the 
carpenter’s shop he wrought and fashioned and fitted, 
until that part of the structure was as firm as the solid 
walls. 

“ It ought to stand a gale ! ” he said to Leslie, on 
the day that the thatch was finished, standing back to 
look at it. The girl looked at him instead, with covert 
jealousy — a strong bronzed man, in a flannel shirt, 
and trousers rolled up to the knee, bare-legged and 
bare-armed. His face was immaculately shaven 
nowadays, and his shorn hair was only just beginning 
to lie smoothly to his head. 

“ Yes — if you haven’t built it exactly in the way 
of the high winds ! ” she said dryly. 

“ Oh, the rising land shelters it. I expect the winds 
are mostly from the north-west here.” 

“ No, they aren’t — they are from the south-east,” 
said the girl bluntly. " I can tell from the trees. 
Haven’t you noticed the bark ? ” 

“ What has that to do with it? ” 

“ They tell that way in the Bush,” said the girl, as if 
a little ashamed of her knowledge. “ An old bushman 
13 


194 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

told me. The side the wind blows is always mossy. 
It’s a way trees have of defending themselves.” 

“ Great Scot ! you are always surprising me ! ” said 
Trelawny frankly. “ Do you know any more wood- 
craft?” 

“ Nothing of any use here,” said Leslie laconically. 
“ When are you going to move into your house? ” 

“ It isn’t decorated yet. I think I’ll get some of 
those coloured crabs out of the swamp, and stick them 
on the walls! You’ll have to boil them for me!” 
He laughed a little mischievously. It was seldom now 
that he laughed, but he was evidently elated with his 
achievement. 

“ I certainly won’t,” said Leslie at once. “ I hate 
killing things ! ” 

“ Perhaps I’ll use some of those spare sails as a ceil- 
ing-cloth — like they do the Indian bungalows.” ( She 
suspected this novel idea was to show her that she had 
not all the knowledge. He also had picked up prac- 
tical hints in distant corners of the world!) “I’m 
glad I floored the hut with boards after all. It will be 
safer for snakes.” 

She shivered a little, and her voice was forlorn as 
she said, “ And you are going to sleep there! ” 

“ Yes ! ” he answered curtly. “ I shall move my bed 
in, any way. Later on I mean to remove one of those 
bunks in the cabins and set it up here — I can fasten 
it against the wall somehow, and dream I’m in a 
ship ! ” he added bitterly. “ Are you sure you won’t 
take possession of the hut yourself?” 

“ No ! — I like to be where I am. I was always 
more comfortable than you, you know, in that inner 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 195 

cave.” She tried to be gracious, and to speak cheer- 
fully. 

Trelawny was really very pleased with his hut, but 
no sooner had he accomplished so much than he wished 
to make improvements. He had ingeniously contrived 
a small space in one wall which he called a window, 
by cutting some of his bamboos shorter and binding 
them together, one over the other, to prevent their 
slipping out of place, and he made a rough shutter to 
shelter the open space in time of bad weather. Then 
he began to plan another room, and to extend the 
framework of the roof, while the girl looked on with 
miserable, baffled eyes. He seemed so content for 
the moment and so occupied, in his stalwart manhood ; 
and she was struggling with emotions and instincts 
that she did not even understand, with nothing but her 
usual work to distract her, and the heady effect of an 
orgy of poetry such as had never come her way be- 
fore. She did not read very wisely, for at this time 
Browning was almost too robust and hopeful for her, 
and even Omar counselled enjoyment of the move- 
ment, whereas Leslie was hugging her woes. Her 
favourite amongst the poems was Swinburne’s 
“ Wasted Vigil,” which began to come and go in her 
memory as did the great Ode. Perhaps her Scotch 
ancestry lent her some sad gift of premonition. Even 
in the present the words were easily applicable to Tre- 
lawny : 

“ Last year, a brief while since, an age ago, 

A whole year past with bud and bloom and snow, — 

O moon that wast in heaven, what friends were we! 

Couldst then not watch with me?” 


196 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

And the silence, and the sweetness, and the longing 
went on as before. 

On the day that Trelawny finished his second room 
he proposed to take up his residence in the hut. He 
would have done so before, but for the difficulty of 
transferring and fixing his bunk, which he had had to 
bring from the schooner in sections, and then to adapt 
it to his new quarters. The further room was to be 
used for storage, and was even more carefully con- 
structed than the first. Besides, he was learning, and 
experience was making him quicker and handier at his 
tasks. March was now far spent, and the winds were 
rougher, though there was still little rain; but Tre- 
lawny was anxious, and began to shift the things out 
of the cave and into his storehouse as soon as ever he 
could. He and Leslie carried most of the stuff be- 
tween them, but the girl would never come further than 
the door. Since he had finished the hut she had never 
set foot in it, but if he noticed her prejudice he made 
no comment. 

It was on the 23rd of March — they had reason to 
remember the date — that he took personal possession 
of the hut, and carried the bedding from the Golden 
Gate into his new bedroom, where the ship's bunk 
now stood looking strangely trim and alien in its new 
setting. Trelawny had floored his hut some two feet 
above the solid earth to keep it dry and safe from 
vermin, and had set up a small dressing-table and one 
of the sea-chests, besides the drawers below his bunk. 
Also, he had a couple of chairs, one of which, made 
after the familiar “ hammock ” pattern with his own 
hands, filled him with extreme pride in himself. It 
was so civilized a place, after the cave, that he felt it 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 197 

incongruous to use it himself while the girl still kept 
her savage quarters. But a last appeal to her met with 
the same flat denial. 

“ No, I won’t! ” she said, to his offer of exchange. 
“ Don’t ask me any more unless you want me to be 
downright rude to you. You’ve been used to the lux- 
uries of life, and I haven’t. I’ll make you some white 
curtains for your window if you like!” she added 
mockingly. 

“ I’ve roughed it on service as you have certainly 
never done ! ” he retorted hotly. “ But I like the de- 
cencies of life, I admit — I will take a good deal of 
trouble to preserve them too, which it is obvious that 
you would not do! Why on earth,” he added impa- 
tiently, seeing the mortified colour in her face, “ do you 
egg me on to say ill-natured things? I used to be a 
good-natured fellow, but with you all the rancour of 
my nature seems to come to the top.” 

“ Oh, no doubt it is my fault ! I dare say you were 

a saint with the ‘ May Queen ’ and her sort I 

am sorry that under no circumstances could I grow 
like them, however.” 

“ Mrs. Gellert was no particular friend of mine, or 
* her sort ’ as you call it, either. I thought her rather 
a vulgar woman, but she was at least pleasant and 
courteous.” 

“ Which I am not! — Well, then, I am sorry I am 
not like Miss Carrington — perhaps I have hit your 
ideal now ! ” 

“ That is a subject we will not discuss, thank you ! ” 

“ I am sorry you will not give me a chance of im- 
provement. If you told me her virtues often enough 
I might perhaps imitate them.” 


198 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

“I should say that was quite impossible! 55 he said 
dryly, and her stormy eyes flashed with rising passion. 

“ A man’s idea of perfection is generally attained 
through ignorance of the woman who poses as model ! ” 
she said very quietly, so angry that she was uncon- 
sciously epigrammatic. 

“ I hate a bitter tongue ! ” he muttered. 

Half unconsciously they had turned from the hut 
and walked across the rising land to the beacon. It 
was so imposing a pile that it hid the immediate vista 
of sea as they approached it, and as if by common 
consent they separated in silence and walked round it, 
one going to the right and one to the left, until they 
emerged on the other side, and stood at the cliff’s 
edge, a yard or so distant from each other. Then, 
simultaneously, they saw the first sign of life they had 
yet seen on those laughing, desolate seas, beyond the 
reef. 

It was a trail of smoke upon the horizon. But so 
unused had they grown to any sign of civilization that 
for a few minutes they stared, incredulous, as they had 
done at the wreck of the Golden Gate , while gradu- 
ally — gradually — the faint witness of man’s vicinity 
grew less and less, until it was only by straining their 
eyes across the bright sea that they were certain of it. 
It was passing away from them instead of coming 
nearer, tantalizing them with the possibility of rescue 
that might be the only one for the remainder of their 
existences. How long it had been visible, and whether 
it had been any nearer, or even within hail, they could 
not tell. While they had stood bickering outside the 
completed hut this thing might have been, and a ship 
come and gone. They neither of them spoke until 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 199 

Trelawny said quietly, “She is going west — south- 
west. She is outward bound.” 

Leslie did not answer. She stood still in the shadow 
of the great pile of wood that seemed a mockery since 
it had not been a flaming beacon, and her eyes were 
still on the horizon, for she did not dare to turn them 
to Trelawny. If she had done so she was afraid that 
he would read a piteous relief in her eyes, for she knew 
that at this crisis she was glad that the ship had passed 
without rescuing them ! Whatever horrible fate might 
be the end of their sojourn on the Island, she did not 
want it to end like this, with such miserable relations 
between them. Come weal or woe, there was at least 
the chance of snatching some sort of happiness while 
they remained together; and though she was the one 
to push it from her she longed for it none the less. 
Her extreme youth made hope her natural element. 
“ Something might happen to make it all right some- 
how ! ” her heart counselled vaguely, and the mirage 
of joy was always coming and going across her desert 
sands. 

Being older in life and experience Trelawny had no 
such illusions. He knew the situation could not alter, 
mentally; but he had begun to look for it to alter 
physically in the natural outcome of things. That 
was common-sense. Give them time enough, he saw 
only one solution to the difficulty ; but the other possi- 
ble factor in the case was their return to the boun- 
daries of the social world, and the restrictions of some- 
thing beside their own wills. If that happened he 
foresaw that the girl’s resolution would obtain sup- 
port from without. Of itself he did not believe that 
it would stand. Her tenacity had made him uncon- 


200 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


sciously sullen and irritable, and had had the effect 
of spoiling his own resolutions and spurring him to 
overcome hers. Had she been weaker, the nobility in 
him might have triumphed to save her from herself; 
for it is an attribute of such natures that whereas help- 
lessness appeals to their chivalry, antagonism rouses 
them into the hunter pursuing the quarry. He felt 
that she was wasting time with her resistance, and he 
had his own passions to curb. The sudden appear- 
ance of the ship caused a revelation in his mind — it 
brought the end of his unfulfilled desires in view, and 
instead of the frenzy of despair and disappointment 
that he half expected, he found himself, like Leslie, 
filled with a relief so secret that he would not acknowl- 
edge it to himself. She was not to escape him this 
time. Her maddening attraction , and the fierce de- 
mand in his own veins , were not to he thwarted as 
they might have been. She was his , as surely as she 
stood in his sight, her grave little face turned to the 
sea! 

“ We must keep a better watch after this,” she said 
at last in a steady voice. “ Perhaps this is the time of 
year when trade brings ships nearest to us.” And her 
heart throbbed with the terror of being the one to 
make the successful signal, and frustrate her own de- 
sire for reconciliation. 

“ Yes,” he agreed. “ Perhaps we ought to take 
watch and watch, and be within sight during the day. 
I doubt our being able to see a ship on moonless nights. 
The reef keeps them far out.” He felt as he spoke 
that this was all that could be expected of him. He 
was salving his conscience the while he hoped for a 
respite. Rescue might come some day and welcome, 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 201 


when he was sure of her. For the moment he was 
almost amazed at his own feeling. 

Leslie seemed a little relieved at his composure, and 
the self-restraint he showed under this new ordeal of 
a lost opportunity. She respected him quite unduly 
when she saw him go back to his house-building, and 
proceed to store their possessions. It was she, in fact, 
who during the afternoon took up her position by the 
beacon and sat down to watch the horizon while she 
worked at a skirt for herself out of Gideon Ivermay’s 
native cloth. Once a cloud in the sky made her sick 
and dizzy with hope and fear, and she sprang to her 
feet to run and call Trelawny before her will should 
fail her; but the cirrus took on a new form and be- 
trayed its origin, and she sank down again to her' task 
with trembling fingers. She had lit a small fire which 
she banked and kept smouldering, with some dry fern 
and grass ready for tinder, to fire the beacon if neces- 
sary, and as the sun neared the horizon she dropped 
the work from her hands and crouching by the smok- 
ing heap she stared out with solemn eyes at the radiant 
sky. 

Green and blue and golden — flame and crimson and 
rose — it stretched across the west, transfiguring the 
blue-black waves and the exquisite wreaths of foam on 
the reefs. The Island was on fire with it, and the 
solitary figure of the girl, quivering with a suppressed 
passion she dared not unloose. She had seen the sun- 
set so many times before, and been awed by its beauty ; 
yet to-night it seemed something more than a pageant 
of colour — it was ominous, flushed with the splendour 
of life, calling to her imperiously to hold out her hands 
for imperial gifts of life and love. A sob broke from 


202 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


her lips, and her hands twisted themselves together as 
if in agony. The squabble of the morning returned 
to her mind to worry her with a fear of having widened 
the breach, and at the same time she longed to be com- 
forted and petted and mastered even against her will. 
It was very lonely keeping vigil by the beacon for the 
ship that she dreaded to see, while the glorious sun 
drenched all the rest of the world with the benediction 
of his passionate passing. 

“ Couldst thou not watch with me one hour ? Behold, 

The sunset skims the sea with feet of gold, 

With sudden feet that graze the gradual sea; 

Couldst thou not watch with me ? ” 

The quotation easily adapted itself. 

Leslie threw herself down in the shadow, her hands 
gripping the earth, and pressed her soft body against 
the hard ground to cool her riotous blood. She was 
nothing but a little animal at the moment, and she 
knew it with shame and fear unspeakable. 

When the sun was gone, and swift darkness fol- 
lowed hard upon his splendour, she dragged herself to 
her feet, and slung along the beach to the cave, where 
earlier in the day she had banked another fire for sup- 
per. She was glad of the darkness, for she felt 
ashamed, and even while she cooked some fish and pre- 
pared the tinned provisions from the Golden Gate , 
she was careful not to allow the fire to blaze up and 
discover her face. She expected to hear sounds from 
the hut to tell of Trelawny’s presence, though she did 
not mean to call him until she wa 9 ready; but after 
listening once or twice the blank certainty fell on her 
that he was not there. When he had left the place she 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 203 

could not of course tell, the beacon being too far off 
for her to catch any sound from the hut, but there was 
complete silence there now, and a new terror fell on 
her that his composure had been assumed, and that he 
had gone away to brood or rave as when he was under 
the Solitude-Madness. 

She sprang up and ran as well as she could in the 
dusk up the northern slopes above the caves, where she 
had found him before. But he was not there, and she 
turned in the direction of the Gorge, calling softly. 
Still there was no answer, and it occurred to her that 
she must get one of the ship’s lanterns, which they 
had trimmed and filled with oil for an emergency, and 
start out to look for him until she found him, how- 
ever late the hour. 

The night was moonless, and in her anxiety Leslie 
did not collect her thoughts to look where she was 
going. She found herself stumbling among the roots 
of trees, and stretched out her hands to feel the trunks, 
fancying that she must be on the outskirts of the 
Gorge where Trelawny felled his timber. The hot 
smell of the earth rose in her nostrils and gave her a 
new, keen sense of the strangeness of her surround- 
ings, for it is a sensation peculiar to the tropics alone ; 
in no temperate climate does the sun bake the ground 
sufficiently during the day for the warm odour to rise 
after he has set. The girl noticed it sub-consciously, 
but it made her tingle with excitement of something 
novel and alien to her upbringing — a larger world, 
and savage instincts. She thought she must be walk- 
ing in a circle, expecting every minute to find Tre- 
lawny lying on the strange-smelling earth at her feet, 
when she suddenly saw the glimmer of her own fire 


204 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


that she had left, and almost ran into the log-hut in 
the darkness. Skirting it quickly she made a rush to- 
wards the cave, meaning to fetch a lantern, but before 
she reached it she came to the fire, and sitting with his 
back towards her was Trelawny’s quiet figure, his head 
leaning on his hand while he kept watch over the sweet 
potatoes and the tinned meat. 

Accident is always the tinder that catches the spark 
from the flint of life. If things did not happen un- 
expectedly we should preserve our mental balance 
from one end of existence to the other, keep to our 
groove, be able to foretell the assured result of our 
intentions. But Fate’s policy is to take us unawares. 
The passion of the sunset hour had slackened Leslie’s 
will, the anxiety about Trelawny had added to it to 
disturb her, and the sudden sight of him thrust her 
blindfold into the snare of her own unruly emotions. 
She took an uncertain step forward, and laid her hands 
on his shoulders. 

“ Miles ! ” she said, and the little broken whisper 
reached him out of the dusk. 

But he would not accept the half capitulation. 

“ Well? ” he said gently. 

“ I thought you had gone off alone — because of the 
ship — and I went to find you — I was so fright- 
ened!” 

“ For me? ” 

“ Yes. Don’t leave me alone ! ” 

“ I had only gone over to the south bay to get some- 
thing from the Golden Gate” 

Another pause. Her hands still rested on his 
shoulders. She drew nearer and they crept round his 
neck, linking themselves under his chin. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 205 

“Well?” he said. 

“ I want to be loved ! ” said the girl with a little sob. 
“ I know it’s wicked — but — please, kiss me and 
forgive me ! ” 

He unclasped her hands and stood up deliberately. 
“ Come along! ” he said in an odd, choked voice, and 
she slipped up to him, her face resting on his hard 
shoulder, and curiously aware of some pulse that 
seemed beating against her like a hammer. That, and 
the relief from the aching and yearning of her whole 
body, were the only things she seemed to know. She 
was so tired out with elementary emotion that it 
was a rest to lie still in his arms and be kissed to 
satiety. 

“ Why did you spoil it by calling it wicked ? ” 
Trelawny said at last reproachfully. “ I can’t see 
anything but the beauty of it.” 

“ Because of that other girl ! ” 

“ Oh ! ” — he drew a long, thoughtful breath — 
“ we’ll discuss that presently. I think I see a way out. 
Let’s have supper first, and then you can sit on my 
knee (where you ought to have been long since!) and 
we’ll talk it all over.” She was moving away from 
him shyly, towards the fire, when he caught her back. 
“ You are sure you love me? ” 

“ Oh I wish I didn’t ! ” 

He gave her a little shake. “ Nonsense ! ” he said, 
and a new element of excitement or high spirits seemed 
to have got into his voice. “ You don’t wish anything 
of the sort. You’ve been dying to make me happy and 
be happy yourself for the past week — only your silly 
little pride got in the way ! Now we shall be all right. 
I’m going to give you some of this stew — is it stew ? 


206 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


Anyhow, it smells all right — and if you are very good 
we’ll eat out of the same plate ! ” 

Leslie sat down in her usual place, between him and 
the fire with rather a dazed look on her small face. It 
seemed such a real and almost terrible thing to her to 
acknowledge loving him, that it was like a reaction to 
hear him speak so lightly, and to laugh. She sat in 
silence while he waited on her — up till now it had 
been her prerogative to apportion the meat in their 
system of sharing, labour — and only shrank a little 
when he sat down on the ground beside her, for his 
actual presence troubled her senses. Naturally she 
could not eat, and it threatened to be only a pretense 
of a supper on her part, until he took her fork and 
deliberately began to feed her like a baby. 

“ Come ! ” he said, more decisively. “ I can’t have 
you shirking like this. What’s the matter? ” 

She could not say. She only knew that the food 
choked her, and she was frightened of the past few 
minutes, but more of the present, and most of all of 
the future. All she contrived to say was, “ Please 

don’t be silly ! Go and sit in your own seat I’ll 

eat all I want — I’m rather thirsty ! ” 

He looked into her face for a moment with kindly, 
quizzical eyes that she did not meet. His own blood 
was leaping and racing fast enough to enable him to 
guess something of the tumult in her veins — he, with 
a lifetime of experience and a man’s control, matched 
to her girl’s bewilderment at a totally new experience. 
It was not fair. She was taken unawares. He filled 
the china mug with clear, cold water that he had 
brought from the stream, and made her drink. 

“ Poor little girl ! you might be some small, feverish 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 207 

wild animal, caught in a trap/’ He said, half tenderly, 
half amused. “Are you so afraid of me? I shan’t 
hurt you ! ” 

“I am not afraid — of anything !” (She lied 
heroically. ) “ But I wish you would let me go away 

— just for a little while — to think.” 

“ Not for a moment ! ” he said firmly. “ I know 
what the result of that would be. A Methodist fit of 
conscience — tears — denials — all sorts of procras- 
tination ! No, we’ve got to talk this out. Had enough 
meat? Eat some fruit, then.” 

She could swallow the ripe melon that he offered her, 
and it seemed to cool her parched throat and relieve 
the throbbing in her head. But she was glad when he 
declared supper over, and washed up their new 
utensils and stored them away, for he omitted none of 
their usual duties. Then he turned round on her and 
caught her by the shoulder, holding her before him. 

“ Look here, you are not going to play with me any 
more ! ” he said with sudden fierceness. “ You 
thought, didn’t you, that you could salve your con- 
science to-morrow for your weakness of to-night? 
You lost your head, and acknowledged that you loved 
me — but it was only to-night’s weakness! To-mor- 
row you would have gone back on the old tack.” 

A lightning glance into her own mind showed her 
that he was right. She would have done so if he had 
let her. She was honest and she did not speak. 

“Well, I’m not going to have it that way,” said 
Trelawny, more quietly, but with an equal intensity. 
“ We’re man and woman, and it's to be yes or no 
between us. You were holding out on the score of my 
being bound to that other girl — Edna Carrington — 


208 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


weren’t you ? On the chance that we should get back 
to all the old laws and ties of civilization some day? ” 
“ Yes ” 

“Well, I tell you now that I don’t believe that we 
ever shall get back. I thought not to-day, when we 
missed our chance with that ship. I believe it will 
never happen again, in my inmost mind, and even if it 
did her position showed me that in all probability ships 
would be too far off to see us — the reefs keep them 
well outside. But I’ll give you my oath that if we 
ever do get away I’ll go straight to Edna and tell her 
the whole story. Will that satisfy you? ” 

“ What will you tell her?” 

“ That I’ve been a fool, and fallen in love with a girl 
who is not half so suited to me as she is!” he said 
savagely, and the grip on her shoulder made her wince 
with pain and some strange exultation. “ A girl who 
is all uncertain moods, and who puts her scruples above 
the very utmost that a man can offer her, and has a 
bitter little tongue and would rather hurt him than not 
— and yet — that I love her so that she is as my soul 
to me — and I can’t let her go — I can’t — I won’t 


The storm of words ended somehow in her inner 
consciousness, for she was gripped against his chest, 
her head under his chin, her face pressed hard against 
his working throat. It seemed as if neither of them 
could be articulate for a moment, for there was nothing 
to hear but the man’s harsh breath and the girl’s 
choking little cry as she clung to him, feeling bruised 
mentally and physically. 

“Now will you leave me?” whispered Trelawny 
incoherently to the warm night. “Now will you tell 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 209 

me that our duty is to go different ways? Do you 
know what would happen if I married another woman? 
I should come back to you some day, as surely as the 
summer comes to the earth, and no vows and no pray- 
ing and no honour would prevent my taking you. You 
had better promise to marry me honestly, rather than 
ruin another woman’s home when it’s too late to do 
anything but mischief ! ” 

She sighed a little, as if the resistance were tired out 
of her. “ Did she — that other girl — care for you 
very, very much ? ” she said slowly, and her voice 
shook. “ Do you think it is going to hurt her as much 
as it did me? ” 

“ Bless your heart, no ! ” He spoke with a cer- 
tainty that she distrusted in her inmost heart — for 
who could help being desolate without him ? “ She 

is a very sensible, practical young woman, and she’ll 
be only too happy to release me under the circum- 
stances. I can’t fancy Edna caring about a fellow 
who wanted some one else ! ” 

“ I’m afraid I should ! ” said Leslie Mackelt in the 
darkness. “ I should cling on to the least excuse to 
keep you — oh, I know I should ! I should hate my- 
self, and you would hate me — but I should do it.” 

It seemed to her the dregs of humiliation that she 
tasted in making the confession ; but he saw it in quite 
another light. 

“ My darling! ” he said. “ Are you as fond of me 
as all that? Let’s sit down, as I said we would, and 
talk about ourselves now we’ve settled all the disagree- 
able part. Leslie, what broke down the barriers to- 
night ? ” 

“I was so frightened!” she confessed, pressing 
14 


210 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


closer in his arms. “ I thought you had gone — that 
you were desperate ” 

“ Oh, no — I only went over to the Golden Gate 
to look for a flag. I want you to make a Union Jack 
out of the Stars and Stripes — there’s a task for 
Hercules ! Oh, I forgot — I found one of the mates’ 
pipes and some tobacco. I do think I might have a 
smoke for once, just to celebrate this occasion! I 
haven’t tasted tobacco for three months, and there’s 
no use in hoarding everything.” 

Perhaps she was a little disappointed that the excite- 
ment of the situation was not enough for him without 
tobacco. She did not grasp the inevitableness of the 
position to Trelawny, nor the more subtle reasons 
that made the pipe a safeguard to him. Even while 
he sat and smoked, the girl leaning against his 
shoulder, he was making new resolutions — desperate 
resolutions that would at least be put down on the 
credit side of his account by the Recording Angel. 
For having overcome her resistance the chivalry in him 
was uppermost again — for the present at any rate. 
The arms that held her held her very gently, and he 
forebore to kiss her again until they finally said good 
night. 

“ Now, Leslie, there is to be no going back to- 
morrow ! ” he warned her, standing at the mouth of the 
cave as at the threshold of her own sanctuary. “ You 
are to meet me fair and square on the same footing as 
to-night.” 

“ I am not a turncoat, once I make up my mind,” 
said the girl a little proudly. “ It was only — that I 
felt it wrong. But if you are sure — about Edna Car- 
rington ” 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 21 1 


“ Supposing we never leave the Island ? ” he said 
rather suddenly. “ Would you have us waste the 
whole of our lives, for the phantom of a woman in 
England who will probably marry somebody else ? ” 
The troubled brown eyes fell before his. “ I won’t 
think of that,” she said bravely. “ There is the chance 
that we may get back, and while there is the chance we 
must consider the ties that bind us — in England.” 

“ Very well — I have given you my word that I will 
make it all right with Edna if we do get back. In the 
meantime — you must be a little kind to me ! ” 

His voice was rather unsteady, and she vaguely 
wondered why. Then he kissed her good night and 
left her with her pulses throbbing again, while he 
turned on his heel abruptly and went off to the log-hut. 
It seemed to him the outward and visible symbol of all 
his good resolutions, set just out of reach of the danger 
of her nearness. And yet, as he flung himself down 
on the little bunk, the cynical query would flit through 
his head as to whether he had built it with enough 
stability to withstand a great storm? Would the 
hurricane of wind — or of passion! — carry away the 
structure he had so carefully erected? Was man 
stronger and more cunning than Nature? He fell 
asleep without answering his own question. 


CHAPTER XIII 


“There may be heaven; there must be hell, 

Meantime there is our earth here, — well!” 

Robert Browning. 

T HE high winds that Trelawny was expecting 
began towards the end of March, and blew from 
the south-east as Leslie had foretold. There seemed 
something ominous in their approach, and he looked 
at the hut as if the strain on the timbers represented 
the strain on his own good resolutions. 

For a week things had gone well — very well in- 
deed; and the situation was as idyllic as Paradise be- 
fore the entrance of the snake. It was a solitude d 
deux, staged with divine loveliness and a perfect cli- 
mate for the development of all the emotions. Even 
quarrelling was only a piquant change from love- 
making, and whetted the appetite afresh for making- 
up. A less fiery and difficult nature than Leslie’s 
might have satiated Trelawny in a very short time; 
but it was her misfortune to vary the mental atmos- 
phere sufficiently to keep up the attraction by her very 
uncertainty. It seemed as if the gusts of her own 
temper fanned the flames of the man’s passion. He 
might hate her, but he did not grow bored, and this 
was the more extraordinary because she was really 
very young — younger than girls of her age in Major 
Trelawny ’s world — and utterly without experience 
to help her to hold her man in thrall. 

212 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 213 

One never knew where to have her, he thought 
savagely, when some mood of hers had made the whole 
Island seem in the grip of a miasmic wind, and he had 
stalked off by himself on a hunting expedition to 
leave her to get over it. One hour she would be full 
of humiliated sweetness, his chattel to do as he liked 
with, it seemed, a little girl to pet and lecture and lord 
it over ; and within a minute something would happen 
to upset her, and she was the bitter-tongued little 
Methodist, denouncing his character and pursuits and 
whole existence with a narrowness that lost none of 
its point in recrimination. He did not see that this 
was the wavering reaction of her traditions and teach- 
ing, the last rush of the waves up the beach as the 
tide ebbed; any more than he knew that when he 
had withdrawn the light of his countenance she 
suffered fits of despair at her own belligerence, and a 
wild remorse that she could so have jeopardized the 
best thing that life held — the very natural and very 
ordinary love he offered her. 

Sometimes it seemed to the girl that her own crude- 
ness and unkindness were killing the sentiment she 
had inspired, when he would not sit close to her in the 
happy, lazy rest hours, or take her in his arms, or 
hardly kiss her. Then she sat in the old attitude with 
her hands round her knees, drooping, and fit to cry 
for the touch and the tone she missed — for she had 
not quite grown up even yet, nor did she understand 
his self-restraint. But it was at such moments that 
the man’s higher self was in the ascendant, and that 
he made pitiful resolutions afresh. 

The evenings were his worst time, for then there 
was no work to intervene, and nothing but the seduc- 


214 THE unofficial honeymoon 


tion of the night to listen to above his own wild senses. 
After the evening meal was over it was their custom to 
sit on the warm sands and watch the moon come up 
across the hills, or the wilderness of stars over the 
sea, while Trelawny smoked a rare pipe or made love 
in broken whispers. He was the more afraid of these 
evenings of the two, for he knew the danger. But 
the girl was only to keep her fool’s paradise a little 
while. 

It had been a windy day, but the night of the crisis 
was calm and fair. There was no moon — she thanked 
God afterwards that there was no moon, and that 
she had not distinctly seen his face — but the night 
seemed very full of stars, and fire-flies that danced 
even down to the water-line. Leslie had been moody 
that day, and had repented at even, her repentance 
taking the form of a specially savoury dish composed 
as a peace-offering. She did not really like cooking, 
but she was woman enough to know that man is 
susceptible to the art of preparing food, and she had 
improved herself in it of late. Therefore the bully- 
beef was rubbed with papau to make it tender, and 
flavoured with certain herbs which they had tested as 
harmless, and the wild yam was cunningly prepared ; 
there was even a sweet contrived of grated cocoanut 
and the liquid wild honey, and toasted cheese for a 
“ savoury,” with biscuit freshly baked in the wood 
ashes! It was a luxuriant supper, and she offered it 
as a silent apology. 

Trelawny felt sentimental after the repast, though 
bully-beef is not conducive to anything but dull reple- 
tion as a rule. He lay down on the warm, moonlit 


THE UNOEFICIAL HONEYMOON 


215 

sands with his head pillowed on the girl’s lap, and 
quoted Omar: 

“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, 

A flask of wine, a Book of Verse — and Thou 
Beside me singing in the Wilderness, — 

The Wilderness is Paradise enow!” 

Then he demanded “ Sweet and Low ” to realize the 
picture. Leslie could not sing, but her voice brought 
the sense of music into the words. She had a song in 
her speaking voice when repeating something that she 
loved that was better than many people’s vocal ef- 
forts. 


“ Over the rolling waters go, 

Come from the dying moon, and blow — 

Blow him again to me ! ” 

There was the yearning for her lover in the words, 
though he lay actually Reside her — an unconscious 
yearning that betrayed the never-satisfied human 
heart. 

“ I remember so well the first time that you repeated 
that to me,” said Trelawny lazily. “ You were sitting 
in the mouth of the cave, and you thought I was 
asleep.” 

“ I was so uncomfortable,” said the girl, struggling 
to express her mental attitude. “ I thought you 
hated me ” 

“ I couldn’t hate you — I might want to, but I 
should find that it was love turned upside-down after 
all!” 

Pretty nonsense, murmured in the dearest voice on 
earth, through the warm depths of the tropic night! 


2 16 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


She put her little work-hardened hands under his chin 
and turned his face gently towards her, looking down 
at him with eyes that seemed darker under the dark- 
ness of her loosened hair. 

“ Your eyes are full of shadows! ” he said. 

She smiled a little and then sighed, running her 
fingers caressingly round his bare throat. Her hands 
carried messages from her heart that her brain never 
counselled, and, indeed, she was innocent of any knowl- 
edge of her own restless movements. She liked the 
liberty of touching him; it made him seem so much 
more her own, and she was always a little jealous 
of the years that lay behind in which other women 
had claimed him. She certainly did not realize that 
her very touch was a temptation, and that the man 
who lay so still with his head resting on her knees 
was wondering when his endurance would snap, or 
whether it would hold out until some intervention of 
direct Providence. 

Trelawny had never before experienced the possi- 
bilities of a desert island as a situation for love-mak- 
ing. In the everyday world there was always the 
chance of interruption, however remote the time and 
place. A certain hatred of discovery haunts the most 
legitimate passion, and restrains it with an educated 
sense of the policeman round the corner. The lovers 
know at least that their time is limited. But unless 
the Angel with the Flaming Sword came to close the 
gates of Paradise, Trelawny felt that there was really 
no obligation save his naked will to terminate the situa- 
tion. It had the curious effect of making him tongue- 
tied for sixty seconds. 

It was Leslie who broke the silence. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 217 

“ Do you remember the first day when we found 
the ship, and brought those clothes back, and you 
shaved, and got into evening dress ? ” 

“ I made a fool of myself! ” said Trelawny dryly. 

“ And I was so rude ! I don’t think you ever 
realised why ” 

“ I should say the exhibition I made of myself was 
quite enough to madden any one with a sense of the 
ridiculous ! ” 

“ It wasn’t that — it was that it made you seem so 
far off. You were Major Trelawny again, as you 
had been on the Aristo, and I felt that if I took my 
proper place I should just fall into the background 
and never speak to you again. It made me savage — 
it seemed so unfair ! ” 

He laughed a little, very much amused, and a little 
comforted. For his hurt vanity was soothed by her 
point of view. She had seen him as superior, rather 
than ridiculous, on the occasion in question, and he 
was reinstated in his own esteem. It had not oc- 
curred to him that broadcloth was a hall-mark of ex- 
alted social position to her until her next words. 

“ Do you know, Miles, I have never worn evening 
dress in my life? ” 

“No?” he said idly, looking up at her with half- 
shut, smiling eyes. “ Did you never go to parties ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, sometimes, of a kind. Not what you 
would call parties ! ” she added with humble haste. 
“ But I mean I have never worn a low-necked dress. 
My people thought it wrong.” She looked at him half 
wistfully, under her lashes, afraid to compete with 
the girls he had known, even in fancy. The display of 
dazzling skins, and the indecency of bare necks, 


2 1 8 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


seemed a daring fascination that was unsuited to her 
Methodist upbringing. 

“ I dare say I should look horrid,” she said. “ I 
am so brown, and it wouldn’t suit me.” 

Of all innocent lips into which Satan ever put 
temptation, those were surely the most innocent. Nor 
could Trelawny himself have guessed that it would 
make the tiny spark for the tinder to catch in another 
minute. 

“ You would look lovely ! ” he said, and he was 
simply stating an honest conviction. “ Do you know, 
Leslie, you’ve got a beautiful figure?” 

He saw her flush with pleasure, merely at his praise, 
and stretched up his hand ta lay it idly on her warm 
breast under the muslin shirt. Then he raised himself, 
rather suddenly, and sat up, taking her in his arms 
to kiss the sunburnt throat she had despised. The 
muslin shirt had no impeding collar, and he pressed 
his lips half savagely against the side of her neck till a 
little pulse there throbbed angrily, and she began to 
struggle. 

“ Let me go ! ” she said faintly. “ You are hurting 
me!” 

“ Turn your head,” he urged hurriedly. “ Let me 
kiss your neck again — the other side will be jealous ! ” 

She flung her head back, gasping, and met his eyes. 
How did she know what he was asking her? There 
was no shame of life put into words then, but she 
suddenly grew from girl to woman as their eyes met, 
and a great shudder passed over all her limbs. For 
however narrow might have been her existence in the 
suburbs of an English provincial town, it was im- 
possible that she could keep her ignorance under the 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 219 

circumstances of travelling in the Bush amongst savage 
races and savage dangers. Certain facts of sex and 
humanity had had to be thrust upon her for her own 
safeguarding. Her brother would see that she was 
instructed, the while he rigidly preached the wages of 
sin and the strict laws of prudery. She knew, how- 
ever — she knew. Trelawny’s eyes were a plain de- 
mand, and she answered it as definitely in words as if 
he had spoken. 

“ No ! no ! — not that ! — I will not — I cannot ! ” 

And then the shame of the confession between them 
drew them apart from each other, never to be quite 
the same again, unless the barrier should be broken 
down and they twain should be one flesh. 

In the morning she could not believe it. 

She had gone to the cave in silence, with hanging 
head, and he had not even attempted to follow her. 
It seemed that she had compassed her own salvation 
with that outspoken No! and he had accepted it. 
Perhaps he was ashamed. Perhaps he had repented 
of the savage instinct which she had recognized and 
cried out against with the shreds of her civilization. 
It seemed as if it must be so, for he had gone off to 
the daily routine of gathering firewood and hunting 
for food, and she had hardly seen him all day. She 
did not even know which direction he had taken, 
though she thought he had gone to the Gorge; and 
curiously enough she did not worry herself as she al- 
most always did when he was absent for some hours 
together. For the first time she was afraid of him, 
and glad of his absence. 

In the late afternoon she was sitting on the cliff in 


220 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


the shadow of the beacon, keeping her monotonous 
vigil for the ship that never came, and working at the 
making of the national flag that they had planned. 
It was to be a white ensign, for they had no other 
background for the Union Jack. One of the small 
sheets from Gideon Ivermay’s cabin was sacrificed, 
and on this they planned out the red stripes from the 
American flag, and used the captain’s old serge suit 
for the necessary blue. Never was a more heterogen- 
eous Union Jack contrived, perhaps, and the red crosses 
of St. Patrick and St. George and the white cross of 
St. Andrew threatened to be very wrong indeed in the 
widths of the stripes, for neither Leslie nor Trelawny 
could rightly remember the gradations. But it was a 
Union Jack in effect, and it was to be run up from the 
flagstaff that Trelawny had fashioned before the log- 
hut, claiming the Island as a British possession. 
Leslie sewed laboriously at the red and blue patchwork 
with a big needle, found in a “ housewife ” in the 
for’ard cabin, and coarse thread. It was not necessary 
to use the sailmaker’s outfit, for the cotton sheet was 
not difficult to work upon, though it was cumbersome. 
She was absorbed in her task even to the closing of her 
quick ears, and did not hear Trelawny coming over 
the grass of the cliff until he actually reached her and 
sat down by her side. Then her senses acknowledged 
him by a leap that seemed to send all the blood into 
her heart, making it throb with painful life. 

“ What are you doing? ” he said quietly. 

“ Making the flag. Look ! is this right ? ” She 
spread it out over her knees for his inspection, not 
raising her own eyes. 

“ Yes, I think so.” 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


221 


There was a pause, while the big needle went in and 
out clumsily, and the girl fought to keep her hands 
steady. His manner was so normal that she thought 
she had nothing to fear, but her nerves hardly obeyed 
her brain as yet. 

“ Leslie,” he said suddenly, “ did I frighten you 
last night ? ” 

“ Yes ” 

“ You knew what I meant ” 

“ Yes.” The assent seemed mechanical. She had 
no control over her lips. 

“ You thought it was a wicked thing to suggest 
because there’s no parson here to say a few words 
over us? ” 

She thought her lips said Yes again. She did not 
know. 

“ Yet you promised me that if we ever were res- 
cued ” — his strong, masculine eyes swept the empty 
horizon with a sort of derision — “ and I made it all 
right with that other woman, that you would be my 
wife ! ” 

“ Yes ” 

“ You know what that means? ” 

“ Yes ” 

“ And you wouldn’t be afraid then? ” 

She was helplessly silent. She knew that he took 
her No for granted — a reasonable denial of fear that 
followed the legal ceremony. But here, in the bare 
truth of Nature, set far from conventional decencies, 
she felt that legality had nothing at all to do with it. 
It was the union of love that would cast out fear. 
Once she was sure of herself and him it made no differ- 
ence whether they were sanctioned by all the laws 


222 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


and churches in the world, or whether they had no 
consent but their own to ask on a dot of an island, 
God knew where in the world. If she were frightened 
here she would be frightened in England, and mar- 
riage had no business with fear. 

“ You think the church service makes it all right? 
If we can find a Prayer Book on the schooner I’ll 
go through any form of words with you that you 
like, in all reverence ! But what’s the difference, 
Leslie? ” 

She could not answer that sophistry. She put her 
hand straight on the crux of the difficulty. “ I was 
frightened,” she said, “ so I knew it was wrong.” 

He was silent for a minute, surprised by the sim- 
plicity of the position she had taken. She thought 
she had answered the whole question ; but she had 
not reckoned for his character any more than he had 
done for hers. Trelawny had been wont to ride very 
straight to hounds when he was in England. He 
went for his objects in life exactly as he went across 
country, without opening gates or going round by the 
road. 

“Look here,” he said after a pause, “if you are 
building on the hope of rescue, I don’t believe we ever 
shall be rescued. I told you that before. I believe 
we’ve got to live out all the rest of our lives ori this 
blessed Island, and unless we make up our minds 
to walk out into the sea and drown, or put a bullet 
into each other from the ship’s stores, we had better 
face the inevitable. I give you my word that if a 
miracle happens and we are found, I’ll make you my 
wife legally the minute we can get hold of a parson. 
But for God’s sake don’t put a chimera between us. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 223 

We ve found each other, heart and soul, in this devil- 
ish place, and it’s the one thing that makes life worth 
living to us — to have each other turns the desert 
into a paradise. But we’re man and woman, and we 
can’t live like angels. Sooner or later — it’s simply 
marking time ” 

He stopped suddenly, and altered his tone. “ You 
said you loved me, little one ! ” 

“Yes!” she said again. Oh, if those stiff lips 
would only frame some other word for her! 

“ Don’t be afraid of me — don’t shrink from me — 
can’t you feel how I want you ? It isn’t only now — 
it’s for always. It would be the same in any part of 
the world.” 

She suddenly put her hands over her eyes and began 
to sob, rocking herself to and fro. She had never 
really felt her God a friend; He had been intro- 
duced to her rather as a stern mentor. But now she 
felt as if He had all at once deserted her. Her tears 
were by no means a feminine trick to gain time or dis- 
arm the assailant. She was ashamed of them; but 
they arose from despair. 

They did not deter Trelawny, either. He was sorry 
for her, but he thought the breakdown inevitable, and 
rather welcomed the sign of weakness. 

“ Poor little girl ! ” he said fondly, slipping his arm 
round the rocking figure and pressing her against him 
with a certain proprietary sense already. “ I won’t 
worry you any more just now. Only I want you to 
get used to the thought of it — it’s so inevitable, sweet- 
heart. You’ll understand yourself better some day.” 

His very kindness and lack of passion made her 
feel the desperation of her plight. As he rose from 


224 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


the grass and walked back to the cave to light the fire 
for the cooking of the evening meal, she heard his 
ominous words echoed in his footsteps, and felt as a 
bird might do, just caught and caged: 

“ It’s so inevitable, sweetheart ! ” 


CHAPTER XIV 


“ Since thou art not as these are, go thy ways ; 

Thou hast no part in all my nights and days. 

Lie still, sleep on, be glad — as such things be ; 

Thou couldst not watch with me.” — A. C. Swinburne. 

T HE March winds gave way in part to April 
showers; but with the magnificence of the tropics 
the winds had the fury of a hurricane, and the showers 
were as if the Heavens opened and poured a flood 
upon the Earth. The first rainy day tested the 
strength of Trelawny’s workmanship, and threatened 
to wash out his hut ; but the double bamboos stood the 
strain of the winds, and the roof held, save for one 
slight displacement that he renovated, while the thatch 
proved watertight to his immense satisfaction. In 
between whiles the weather was again perfect — 
warm, blue days, with little or no wind, during which 
he had time to secure himself and the spoils brought 
from the Golden Gate. He had stored nearly all that 
he could now, and was beginning the foundations of 
yet another storehouse, for all the heavier fittings he 
hoped to get out of the schooner before she was 
broken up. The rainy days were at present few and 
far between; but when they did come they were per- 
sistent, and were an augur for the future. 

Leslie still occupied the inner cave with its sweet 
bed of dried grass on the shelf of rock, though Tre- 
lawny had made a rough screen for her and set up a 
15 225 


226 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


dressing table in the outer cave. It had come to be 
as a place of refuge to her own mind, and instead 
of resenting it she was relieved to think of Trelawny 
in the hut, at a little distance. She was not physically 
afraid of him, for she knew by perfect instinct that he 
would never use violence to her. It was the strength 
of her own will that she doubted, the bewildering 
vacillations of her own mind which could not but ac- 
cept his arguments and only clung blindly to the taught 
theory of her whole life without being able to support 
it logically. Having once put his good resolutions 
behind him, Trelawny was at least consistent in his 
attitude; the same plea met her at all points, in the 
look in his eyes, in the touch of his hands, in the tone 
of his voice, without actual words. “ Do let us be 
happy ! ” was the spirit of his whole relation with her. 
and the wooing world around interpreted the saying 
night and day — “ Do let us be happy ! ” smiled the 
blue sky — “ Let us be happy ! ” laughed the sunset 
sea — “ Happy ! happy ! happy ! ” sang the winds. 
The butterflies flashed it in their wings, and the scent 
of the flowers breathed it on the night air. All na- 
ture conspired to urge the man’s petition, and there 
was only the will of one weak girl to withstand the 
mighty force, with her heart already a traitor and 
gone over to the enemy ! 

For she did long to yield. Not for any sensual 
reason, for Leslie Mackelt was not a consciously 
passionate woman, nor indeed had she any experience 
to make sexual intercourse a temptation. It was 
rather the other way — a thing of unknown terror 
and some distaste. But it was the desire to give, to 
bestow the crown of surrender as a proof of love, that 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 227 

made even the sense of sacrifice the more reason for 
giving. For some mysterious demand of man’s mind 
— at present hid from her — Trelawny pleaded for 
this final gift as for the one thing needful; and Leslie 
had the supreme love-instinct to beggar herself in 
self’s immolation. There are only two reasons why 
women are ever seduced by men before passion is 
any personal temptation to them — one is curiosity, 
and the other is the desire to give. Satisfy the first, 
and a woman with a cold temperament, or ungener- 
ous, will never slip again. But for the nature which 
can feel the joy of giving, and which has the unstinted 
power to love, there is no security. 

Leslie Mackelt began to wonder how long her resolu- 
tion would hold out, and to measure its endurance by 
the actual passing of days. It was the first step which 
had counted — so long as she looked at him with ig- 
norant eyes, Trelawny had held to his good intentions 
even though they paved the way to Hell for him ; but 
when that barrier was broken down by chance, once 
she had understood him without his having to put 
his difficulty into words, he had changed his mind for 
good and all, and brought all his strength of will to 
reduce the fortress of her resistance. It seemed prac- 
tically impossible to him that they should be rescued, 
for years at any rate ; and when, if ever, they were, it 
only remained to ratify the tie. All law and order, 
the very structure of civilization, had become like a 
myth amongst the bare realities of life on the Island. 
Food and shelter and warmth, increasing health as the 
natural outcome of these and their attainment, and 
again the supreme instincts of sex as the outcome of 
health — that was all that remained. For the rest, 


228 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


they were man and woman, and he had found her 
fair. 

Leslie had never yet been into the hut since its 
completion. Though she had helped to get the roof 
on, and to fix the door on the Australian principle, 
since Trelawny had actually furnished it she would 
not set a foot inside. At first it had been a kind of 
obstinate jealousy of the work that separated him 
from her; but later some instinct seemed to have set 
her against it, and now she began to see why. For 
without explanation she knew that it had become as 
a bridal chamber to him, and that his continued ar- 
rangement and improvement had one aim in view. 
The night that she set her foot across the threshold was 
the last of her maidenhood. Sometimes, when she 
heard him whistling or singing cheerily from the inside 
of the hut, while the soft warm rain fell steadily upon 
the fruitful earth, she was ludicrously reminded of the 
birds, nest-building in the youth of the year. He had 
planted and trained a great vine all about the portal 
and front of the hut, and it had taken hold and 
climbed, throwing out great green leaves and masses 
of sweet white flowers; and each side of the doorway 
were two wild orange trees, just opening their typical 
blossoms. The place was becoming a bower. 

There had been a week of rainy weather in the mid- 
dle of April; but the fifteenth — she marked that date 
again — was a perfect day. The blue sky and the 
high white clouds promised fair weather, and invited 
to an excursion. Trelawny suggested their going 
over to the Golden Gate to bring away the last of the 
fittings which he had already packed and stacked for 
removal; and because inaction was becoming torture 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


229 


the girl assented eagerly. While they had something 
to do the crisis that was in both their minds remained 
in abeyance, and there seemed always some fresh cor- 
ner to explore on the schooner, the chance of some 
cunning contrivance for storage that they had over- 
looked. She took a bundle of such food as they might 
want, and a bottle of fresh water, meaning to boil it 
on the ship and make coffee in honour of the occasion. 
It was seldom that they allowed themselves the luxury 
of tea or coffee, for their store was by no means in- 
exhaustible. 

“ I’ve been wondering whether I couldn’t make 
some sort of a raft and rig it up with those spare sails,” 
said Trelawny, as they sat over their meal in the 
shadow of the galley. It was too hot to go inside, for 
Leslie had been cooking on the oil stove. “ I should 
like to get round the Island by sea — I should learn 
a lot more about the currents and the possible landing- 
places.” 

A shadow of anxiety crossed the girl’s face. 
“What about the sharks?” she said. “We saw 
some on the north side, you know.” 

“ There are plenty of weapons on board to dispose 
of them, and enough ammunition that isn’t spoilt.” 

“ It doesn’t sound very safe,” she said uneasily. 
“ But you might try it inside the reef first. What 
would you make it of? ” 

“ Bamboo. I’ve seen native rafts in Mauritius. If 
I took a light out after dark the fish would simply 
swarm round me. I could scoop ’em in, and we could 
begin a store of dried fish.” 

“ Yes, I think we ought to set about storing food. 
The season seems getting so stormy,” Leslie agreed. 


230 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

“ We’ll sun-dry the fish. The difficulty will be 
keeping the sea-birds off them. I wonder if we could 
rig up a scare crow out of the captain’s old clothes! 
They’re too stiff with salt to be any other earthly 
use.” 

“You forget the flag! I’ve used most of his 
trousers for that. No, you’d better net your fish. If 
you could make me a shuttle I could net a finer mesh 
than those we have.” 

“I’ll try",” said Trelawny rather doubtfully. (He 
had an idea that a shuttle was something like a 
spinning-wheel.) “ I wish there were a brain in one’s 
left hand, Leslie.” 

“ What do you mean ! ” 

“ Well, there does seem to be a brain in one’s right,” 
he remarked, spreading out his hard hands, shapely 
still for all their rough work. “ It does its work by 
instinct. But one’s left hand is such a fool! ” 

They both laughed, Leslie more genuinely than she 
had for days. The matter-of-fact level of the con- 
versation was reassuring, and though she did not like 
the idea of the raft it was prudent to catch fish in 
larger quantities than was possible in the rock pools, 
and to store them, and anything that diverted Tre- 
lawny’s immediate attention from herself was becom- 
ing desirable. She was thankful for the respite, and 
fell back into the old fashion of their comradeship, 
discussing the best means of provision for the future, 
and the prudence of beginning some rough planta- 
tions for next year’s crops. The plantains were do- 
ing well, and Trelawny had a desperate scheme for 
cultivating the wild cane and yam. He had already 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


23 1 


cut and planted the few potatoes that he had found 
on board, and had enriched the soil with the guano 
which was easily obtainable about the coast, after 
methods which he had seen in Mauritius. Had the 
Golden Gate carried a more varied cargo, they might 
have had grain or seeds to sow; but her stores were 
nearly all such as could not be replaced. 

The morning had been exceptionally fine, and had 
given no hint of bad weather. But with one of those 
rapid changes that belong exclusively to the tropics, 
the clouds gathered about noon, and by one o’clock 
there was a sudden storm — so sudden that Trelawny 
and Leslie had barely time to take shelter in “ G.I’s ” 
cabin before the great drops were raining on the deck 
like angry coins, and out of a gathering pile of cloud 
ran one jagged streak of lightning right down to the 
horizon, with a splitting clatter of thunder hard upon 
its heels. It was only one arrow of flame and one 
reverberating echo from end to end of the heavens; 
and then as suddenly as it had come the storm rolled 
off northwards, and left the sky clear again, with noth- 
ing to tell of its happening save the wet decks. 

Leslie had put her hands up to her ears with the 
involuntary recoil of highly strung people; and 
Trelawny laughed at her. 

“ You will have to get used to a good deal more 
of that, later in the year!” he said teasingly. “ I 
suppose I shall find you burying yourself like a tortoise 
under heaps of seaweed at the back of the cave! ” 

“ I can’t help it ! ” remonstrated the girl. “ Thun- 
der and lightning always make me tingle all over, and 
gasp for breath.” 


232 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

“ By Jove ! that was a flash, too ! Enough to split 
a dozen of our largest trees. I expect it has done its 
work somewhere. ,, 

But he did not realize how true his words were till 
a few hours later. 

In the cool of the afternoon they started for home, 
laden as usual with odds and ends from the cabins 
and the hatches. They threaded their way through 
the mangrove swamp in silence, Trelawny’s only re- 
mark being a joking one about the crabs which Leslie 
still stoutly refused to kill in order to obtain their 
coloured shells as ornaments for the hut. She shied 
off any reference to the little log-cabin however, and 
was glad when they left the evil-smelling swamp behind 
them and reached the bit of bush that skirted the south- 
west of the cliff. But here Trelawny paused. 

“ Do let us sit down and rest a few minutes, Leslie,” 
he said, shifting his burden from one shoulder to the 
other. “ I’m confoundedly hot.” 

“ It was airless in there. But we mustn’t be long, 
or the light will be gone.” 

“ Well, sit down for a minute, anyway.” 

He took the girl’s burden from her, and resting his 
hands on her shoulders pushed her gently down to 
the roots of a great ficus. His very touch made her 
uneasy, the more so when she found him seating 
himself by her side without saying anything. Silence 
always seemed ominous now. The next instant he 
had slipped his arm round her waist, and forced her 
head back against his shoulder to kiss her lips. 

“ The first kiss to-day ! ” he whispered. “ I do 
think I am forbearing ” 

“ Oh, Miles, please don’t ! ” 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 233 

But there was no mercy now in Trelawny. He 
thought it really better for both of them that she 
should give way, and he did not realize how much 
the lack of an audience had influenced his own princi- 
ple. There was absolutely no one in the universe for 
them save their two selves ; and what men and women 
will say and do under such circumstances is a totally 
different thing to a courtship chaperoned by a well- 
populated world. 

“ The house is quite ready for you, my darling. 
Come to me to-night — will you ? ” 

She had known and feared that. Yet his wooing 
was so utterly gentle that she was disarmed. At the 
least hint of roughness she would have fought. Here, 
in the warm bush, it simply seemed that her resolution 
was slipping away from her, not broken down, but 
melting in his arms. 

“ It isn’t wrong, Leslie — I wouldn’t ask you if it 
were really wrong. Can’t you see that it’s all right — 
all through Nature — — ” 

A pair of butterflies, male and female, fluttered 
past them into the warm sunset just beyond the out- 
skirts of the bush where they sat. The call of a wild 
pigeon to his mate broke the stillness. Two brilliant 
lizards ran across the ground at their feet — a pair 
again. It was the season of mating. She pushed 
him from her for the last time in a dying struggle, and 
rose to her feet feeling giddy and faint. 

She had the strength not to say Yes. But she had 
lost the power to say No. 

They climbed the last slopes in silence, but as they 
emerged on to the cliff Trelawny had begun to whistle 
the soft full notes that sounded so like the nest- 


234 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

ing-call of the birds. The girl turned her face to the 
cool breath of the sea, but her eyes were blind and 
dazed and she saw nothing. The first she knew of 
anything to break the usual picture was Trelawny’s 
astonished pause. The whistle stopped, and some in- 
definable change seemed to come into the whole at- 
mosphere. 

“ By Jove ! ” he said, “ the beacon’s on fire ! ” 

It was quite true. The great pile was throwing out 
volumes of smoke on all sides, and from the top 
sprang a great fork of flames that jetted out in fresh 
directions even as they approached. The brief storm 
that had passed over them on board the Golden Gate , 
had indeed “ done its work,” as Trelawny said. That 
one jagged fork of flame had fired the dry wood of 
the beacon with more certainty than any effort to get 
it alight on their part could have done. 

At the sight of all their labour being wasted for no 
purpose both Leslie and Trelawny started forward, 
running at the top of their speed, and heedlessly cast- 
ing their burdens down on the grass of the cliff while 
they went to the rescue. But at the top of the cliff 
they stopped as if turned to stone, by mutual consent, 
and stared out to the horizon as once before. 

For there, beyond the white surf tossing on the 
reefs, was a second ship — a ship with great sails and a 
low funnel that showed that she had auxiliary steam. 
She was not a mere trail of smoke upon the horizon 
this time, but a big tangible object in the blue sea just 
beyond the dreaded barrier, and so close that they 
could see what she was doing. It became certain in 
a moment or two that she had come close in to the 
Island attracted by the red flare of the beacon, and that 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 235 

she was lowering a boat to investigate the cause. So 
their intention had been fulfilled without their actual 
agency, and the collection of firewood, piled high 
upon the cliff, had flared a message for them and in 
their absence wrought their delivery. 

It was so sudden that for the moment they seemed 
stunned, and stood staring at the movements of the 
boat which evidently intended to try to find a passage 
past the reefs to the shore. But Trelawny’s excur- 
sions into those waters had taught him the dangers 
of the coast, and the impossibility of even a small 
boat coming in safely at low tide. He had swum 
out to the reef again and again, and in spite of Leslie’s 
fear of sharks had explored the stretch of water along 
this western shore. He knew, from one glance at 
the boat, that she stood little or no chance amongst 
the perils of that bay after dark. A lightning survey 
of the situation convinced him that if they were to be 
rescued the ship must wait for them until daylight, 
and then send a boat ashore, when the tide would be 
high. 

He turned and shouted to Leslie as if she were a 
comrade in a storm, or hundreds of yards lay between 
them instead of a few feet. 

“ Go and get me a bamboo pole — quick ! and a 
bundle of fern for a torch.” 

They had grown expert in the making of these lat- 
ter, did one of them want to go any distance from 
the cave after dark. A quantity of dry fern bound 
round with green creeper, leaving the fronded heads 
free, was easily set alight and would burn wildly, 
gradually working down to the stalks by which they 
were carried. Since their discoveries in the Golden 


236 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

Gate they had improved the flare of their torch by 
soaking in oil, and the effect was visible for a long 
distance, much further than the ship’s lanterns. 
Leslie sped away, deer-footed, to the cave, and came 
back in record time with the long pole and the fern 
torch. Trelawny, never removing his eyes from the 
boat, thrust the pole into the bundle of fern, and 
lighted it quickly from the beacon proceeded to move 
it to and fro to catch the attention of those on board. 

For a minute the girl watched him, fascinated, for 
she did not understand what he was doing; then she 
realized that he was talking to the people — the 
strange people from another world, who had come to 
rescue them ! — and that they were answering with a 
flag. It was fortunate that the quickly dying light 
of sunset was behind them, as otherwise Trelawny 
could not have distinguished the dipping and raising 
of the little object at that distance; but the strange 
sign-language of semaphore was written in black for 
him upon the brilliant colours of the sky, and his own 
flaring torch was far more legible to them against 
the dark woods behind. 

The mysterious “ flag-wagging ” speech went on 
for some twenty minutes before the long pole slid to 
the earth between Trelawny’s hands, and the girl 
dared to ask a question. 

“What are you doing? Have you made them un- 
derstand ? ” 

“Yes — oh, yes!” His voice was as hoarse as 
hers. “ They are going to lie there all night and wait 
for us. They will take us off in the morning ” 

“ All night ! In the morning ! Why not now ? ” 

“ They can’t pass the reef — I warned them. It 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 237 

would be dark before we could get back. They must 
have daylight and high tide. There’s no moon to- 
night, or we might have risked it.” 

“ Are you sure — they won’t go away — and leave 
us?” She knew that her voice was awful, but she 
did not know how awful until she heard the sharp 
fear in his. 

“ No — oh, no ! How can you say that ? But I 
shall sit and watch all night — I shall keep vigil ” 

Then she laughed harshly. “ You had much better 
lie down and go to sleep — we both had. We could 
not make them stop if they wanted to desert us, 
though we stayed awake for ever. We should only 
see them go ! ” 

“ But they won’t go, I tell you ! ’” he said, almost 
querulously. “ They are casting anchor — there ! I 
told you so ! The ship is lying to. She is a Mission 
boat, on a special trip round the Polynesian Islands, 
and she ran out of her course a bit. There are pas- 
sengers on board — she’s a big boat — they would not 
dare to leave us.” 

He was almost incoherent. The sudden ending of 
the resignation to which he had tried to accustom 
himself, seemed to have turned his brain for the mo- 
ment. He had mentally drugged himself to think that 
it could not end ; and now it had ended, quite abruptly, 
in a flash of hope. Curiously enough it was the girl 
who was the more collected. She turned away after 
one last strange look at the ship, with a slight shrug 
of her shoulders. 

“ Anyhow, we must eat if we have to wait, and you 
had far better sleep. I will go and make supper and 
bring it up here, if you like to keep watch,” 


238 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

There was a faint irony in her tones, but he was 
too absorbed to resent it. He saw her spring down 
the slope like a deer while he began to pace restlessly 
up and down, with his eyes alternately on the steadily 
burning beacon and the outlines of the ship already 
growing dim in the increasing darkness until she be- 
gan to show her lamps. And he was still walking up 
and down when the girl returned, bringing with her 
a carefully cooked meal. 

“ There is no reason to keep anything now, I sup- 
pose, so I opened one or two of the tins,” she said, 
setting down one thing after another on the level turf 
of the cliff. She was quite composed, and hardly 
turned her eyes seawards, though he could not keep 
his own away. “ See, there is fish, and meat, and 
coffee — all hot, but I am afraid they will soon get 
cold unless we pull some of this burning wood from 
the beacon and make another fire. And I have some 
biscuits and jam as well ; but let us eat this first.” 

She sat down quite calmly, at a safe distance from 
falling sparks from the beacon, and began to eat with 
apparent relish. He laughed half deliriously, feel- 
ing choked, and a bit of a fool. “ Your nerve is bet- 
ter than mine ! ” he said. 

She turned her great heavy eyes to his face, and 
looked at him sombrely across the dusk. Somehow 
it seemed that their positions were suddenly reversed, 
and she was very much the older of the two. “ I am 
not quite so keen as you are at getting off, perhaps,” 
she said quietly. “ You see, a different fate awaits 
me in the real world ! ” 

“ A big fortune, anyway,” he tried to say kindly. 
The whole situation seemed to have thrown him off 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 239 

his balance, so that he hardly knew what he was 
saying or eating. 

She did not answer, and long afterwards he shivered 
at the remembrance of those well-meaning words of 
his, and her utter silence. It seemed to him the 
blunder of his life, and he wondered how she had en- 
dured it so patiently. Why had he babbled of 
material things just then, the little markets of the 
world that did not yet touch them? Of all strange 
things in his unofficial honeymoon that ludicrous sup- 
per on the edge of the cliff always struck him in 
memory as the most bizarre — the false air of festivity 
in such luxuries as coffee and fish and meat, and the 
unusual taste of the biscuit and jam when the girl 
fetched them after the first part of the repast was 
done. He wished quite definitely that the last meal 
there had been one of simple wild fruit and clear water 
— the hard, plain fare that they had been thankful for 
in the first weeks of their sojourn. 

He remembered too, long afterwards (oh, how 
long!) that she had gathered up the empty dishes in 
her hands when it was over, and turned away with the 
same air of perfect unconcern. 

“ I shall wash these and stack them in case we want 
to take them with us,” she said. “ I suppose you will 
stay up here, won’t you? I should indulge myself 
and smoke, if I were you. But I hope you will get a 
little sleep.” 

Then he had suddenly awakened from his trance 
for a few minutes, and had followed her down to the 
cave, to the old spot where they had spent so many 
mornings and evenings — a place of memories, 
haunted wth passion and pain and rich joy, all the in- 


240 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


crease and development of life. And there he had 
taken her in his arms and kissed her again, with a 
tenderness that tortured him to think of, lest it was 
not tender enough. 

“ Leslie,” he said, “ this is only the beginning for 
us, you know. You won’t forget what we arranged ? 
We’re going back into the world — but you prom- 
ised ” 

She suddenly stopped his lips with her own, and 
kissed him with a kind of passionate protest. He held 
her and murmured over her . . . and yet she felt, 

as she turned away to the cave that, some breath from 
a colder land had blown between them, that it was in- 
deed over. 

Trelawny did not go back to his vigil on the cliff. 
The beacon still flared high in the sky, but he left it 
and walked with slow steps towards the deserted hut. 
It was suddenly certain in his mind that he need keep 
no watch, that they would be taken off on to the ship 
in the morning, and that he could lie down as usual, 
though he did not think he should close his eyes. 
Leslie saw him go. She stood a minute at the mouth 
of the cave, watching him draw near the hut and enter 
the dark doorway. She waited to see if he reappeared, 
but he did not. Then she went to her own rough 
couch for the last time, and lay down on the soft 
grass heaped on its bed of rocks. 

She lay there for a long time in utter stillness, with 
no hope of sleep. Through the opening that led into 
the outer cave she had been wont to hear Trelawny ’s 
even breaths, and felt it a protection in the depths of 
the night; but she could not hear him to-night — the 
last night of their mutual solitude — for the hut was 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 241 

tnuch too far off, and she might never feel so near to 
him again through the exquisite darkness. A sense of 
the loneliness of parting surged up from her heart, all 
over her body, so that she writhed as if in physical 
pain. This was the end of it all. She made no ac- 
count of his protestations that it was but the begin- 
ning of a new life for them for her mind swung back 
with a reaction to the old track of her teaching and 
traditions, and she did not mean to keep him to his 
promise to break his troth with Edna Carrington. She 
did not, indeed, mean to allow him to be disloyal. She 
had given way in the stress of her love for him, 
given in so far that she had fed her hunger for his 
caresses under the excuse of a vague, future marriage. 
But her rigid sense of duty came back upon her with 
the first link with civilization, and she condemned her 
own consent as dishonorable, with her mind, the while 
her heart cried for quarter. 

There was no tie between them; but that was not 
the worst to her. She had not given supremely to the 
utmost that was in her. She had held back one gift 
for which he had asked, hoarding her treasure like a 
miser, and now in the flashlight of her agony she saw 
herself as a failure even in love. It would have been 
sin of course — the conventional morality of her creed 
taught her so — but in a supreme moment her woman- 
hood rose superior to creeds. And somehow she felt 
that it was the Devil who would have gloated over her 
wickedness — but that God would have understood. 
If it had been a temptation to her she might have called 
it vice; but she recognized it only as a chance to beg- 
gar herself with one act of utter abnegation, and this 
she had refused. 

16 


242 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


The burden of remorse became intolerable. She 
sprang up at last and crept into the outer cave, her 
little bare feet making no sound at all on the smooth 
sand. She skirted the dried seaweed still lying there 
in heaps, and went on up over the rocks to the coarse 
grass, and so to the clearing where the hut stood. The 
fruit trees each side of the door had flowered, and the 
scent of the orange blossoms was unmistakable, so that 
when her feet touched the fatal threshold she hesi- 
tated, as one who leaves something behind. But it 
was her youth that she sacrificed. 

There was no light in the hut save what fell through 
the open doorway behind her, but she could see the bed 
where Trelawny was lying. The narrow bunk was 
gone — she had guessed as much with a sweet shud- 
der — and in its place was a wider couch, a double 
couch, spread with clean linen over a soft bed of dried 
grass, clean-scented from sun and wind. And on the 
couch Trelawny was lying as he had flung himself 
down, and her heart beat time to her feet, only louder, 
and the rush of blood in her veins seemed to carry her 
on to him, until she reached his side and bent down 
. . . and he was asleep. 

No rebuff could have been so direct as this. He 
was worn out with the excitement of the ship’s arrival, 
and with the excursion earlier in the day, and he had 
forgotten even to watch lest his precious hope of res- 
cue was stolen from him. No thought of this last 
night together had kept him awake — no wild, hot 
despair had robbed him of his healthy, natural sleep. 
The passion that had been as fever in his veins seemed 
to have suddenly departed, at the first cool touch of the 
outside world. As she stood beside him in the half- 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 243 

darkness that was scented with orange blossoms, she 
realized what she had come to offer him — and he was 
asleep. 

She made not the least movement that could wake 
him, but she was not afraid that he would wake now. 
She knew that he would sleep on, unconscious that she 
had ever been there. For quite five minutes she stood 
by him in silence, looking down curiously, as our dead 
may look at us, at the dim outline of his face that she 
could gradually see. He was lying on his back, breath- 
ing quite regularly, the very recumbency of his pow- 
erful body making him intensely masculine. One arm 
lay stretched across the empty space beside him, as if 
in possession. For a pang’s space — just as long as it 
takes to feel — she wondered what woman would lie 
there, beneath the mastery of his strong hand; and 
then she turned away, stepping lightly out of the hut, 
and leaving behind her some remnants of her youth, 
and the man to whom she had offered herself — and 
he had slept. 

Trelawny awoke at sunrise, and ran headlong out of 
the hut with fear in his eyes and no room in his brain 
for any thought but that the ship might have gone in 
the night and left them. But he was rewarded with 
the sight of her, rocking a little in the flowing tide, 
but stately and stationary, awaiting them. He found 
the beacon burnt down to the ground, a blackened 
heap of ashes; but it had served its turn, and they 
needed it no longer. 

By the aid of an improvised flag at the end of his 
bamboo pole, he caught the attention of those on board 
and began to signal again, the ship replying from her 


244 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


deck. He explained the tides, and the dangers of the 
reefs, but he thought that by keeping an eye on his 
signals he could navigate them in. They promptly be- 
gan to lower a boat, and without waiting to eat or 
make a further toilet he ran back to the hut for Gideon 
Ivermay’s trunk which would hold all he wanted to take 
with him, calling the girl on his way. 

By the time Leslie Mackelt made her way to the cliff 
where Trelawny had returned to signal, the sun was 
bright in the heavens, and all the familiar beauty of the 
Island flashed and shimmered with the new day. She 
was far more composed than he, and had made her 
appearance as little remarkable as possible, her visible 
clothing being mostly the draperies of the beautiful 
Indian shawl; but she carried a fairly large bundle 
tied up in a sheet, and its weight was suggested by the 
fact that she rested it on the ground while she stood 
in grave silence looking out over the tumbling water of 
the reef to the nearing boat. It was out of danger 
now — there were only the shore breakers to manipu- 
late — now the rowers were rushing the heavy boat 
through the surf — two men jumped ashore, and the 
strange sound of a keel grating on the sand and shells 
came upwards to the ears of the castaways as they 
turned by tacit consent and went down the slope to 
meet their rescuers. 

“ Thank God! ” Trelawny said simply, as his hand 
felt the grasp of a fellow man again, and the four who 
had brought the boat ashore crowded round them 
in a babel of asking questions and exclamations of 
wonder. 

“ We’re the Enterprise — the Mission ship, taking 
stores to all the Islands. — Passengers on board ? I 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 245 

should say so! — We’re taking in most of Polynesia, 
and any one who likes to prospect with us. — Guess 

you will, anyway! ” (They were Americans, 

every one. ) “ How did you come on this spicy spot ? 

— Wrecked from the Aristo ? Never heard of her! — 
Been here long? Six months ? — Say ! if that isn’t the 
limit! ” 

Then Trelawny’s familiar, powerful voice, confused 
with the sing-song drawl — 

“Where were they bound? San Francisco? — 
How many days ? — No, we don’t know our latitude 
even. — Flung here by some marine earthquake. — Only 
fifteen days from San Francisco? — Going straight 
there? — Oh, let’s get on board, and all explanations 
to follow ! ” 

It was a mere jumble of words, through which the 
girl stood motionless and silent, a queerer figure than 
Trelawny in his tumbled flannels, with an outlandish 
hat of plaited straw on her head, in the shadow of 
which her face looked white and placid, like the mask 
of a dead person. Only when the men inquired briskly 
if they had any traps they wanted to take with them 
she said, “Nothing but this!” and lifted her bundle 
herself into the boat. Trelawny became sharply con- 
scious of her on the instant, and turned to the men 
with a new question, which she heard. 

“ Are there any ladies on board ? ” 

“You bet! We’ve a whole company of Nuns — 
Sisters of the Seven Sorrows, prospecting on their own 
account for a desert island. I should say yours was 
the thing to suit ! ” 

Every one laughed but the girl. She seemed abso- 
lutely indifferent, taking her place in the boat with the 


246 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

bundle at her feet, and accosting or answering nobody. 
But the man who seemed in charge — a young fel- 
low in uniform, apparently a junior mate — spoke 
again. 

“ The Mother Superior’s just the finest woman I 
ever struck! She’ll take care of your girl for you. 
My! that woman could command a High Jinks crowd 
with a look, or take over a Saloon from Devil’s City 
and run it straight. She’s just the greatest thing that 
ever happened ! ” 

Even in his tense excitement Trelawny was vaguely 
struck by the force of the young officer’s words, and 
the impression of a personality behind that must have 
impressed him in some extraordinary fashion to make 
him speak so, even allowing for his extravagant phras- 
ing. But he was even more conscious of a shadow, 
something that seemed to emanate from Leslie Mackelt 
and that chilled him even in his enthusiasm of escape 
and the pressure of his excitement. It was a subtle 
sense of change, and change is rarely all relief and 
pleasure even after a phase from which we have 
striven to escape. The force of custom and habit has 
its bonds. And the change was here, though he had 
not time or chance to understand it at the moment. 
Something had happened, that was all he knew — 
something that was not entirely explained by this sud- 
den shock of events in their apparent destiny. 

“ Sure you didn’t want to bring away any more 
truck?” said the young mate, as they threaded the 
treacherous reefs, and found themselves in the toss of 
outside waters. “ If you’ve been housekeeping six 
months you must have tossed up considerable prop- 
erty!” 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 247 

“ No, leave it for some other poor devil who might 
be stranded here ! ” said Trelawny with a reckless 
laugh. “ There’s a whole house for him to start with 
— furnished too, from the wreck of the schooner we 
found in a little bay to southward.” 

“ A wreck ! A schooner ! ” — There was a fresh 
babel of questions and answers, even as the boat came 
alongside and was brought up below the ladder. 

“ The Golden Gate , from San Francisco. You’ll 
see her if we run past the south coast,” said Trelawny, 
as he turned to help the silent girl up the ship’s side. 
“ Oh, there’s nothing worth taking on her now, only a 
spoiled cargo of copra. She was a Yankee — I don’t 
know if her presence in the bay constitutes possession. 
We left the Union Jack flying at the hut, anyway! ” 

Still the same clamour of voices, like the painful 
breaking of a long silence. They buffeted the girl as 
though they were tangible things, and left her deaf and 
giddy. She set her foot on the swinging ladder, and 
felt herself half helped, half lifted up to the deck, 
amidst more exclamations and questions from strange 
lips and curious, staring eyes. The world, rolling 
back on her after the stillness of the solitude, cowed 
and checked her. She looked back from the new deck 
to the low, lovely line of shore, the broken foam on 
the reef, which seemed now like a guardian of safety, 
the faint outline of the caves — further off a white 
speck fluttering forlornly, that was their improvised 
flag, the Union Jack of England — and a great cry to 
go back rose in her, a wild, pitiful appeal to some God 
to let her die now and be buried in the silence and the 
sweetness where she had come into the kingdom of 
her womanhood — and lost it. 


248 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

And it was then, with the voiceless prayer in her 
eyes, that she turned to a company of black-robed 
women who stood in a group near the gangway, as if 
waiting to pity and help; and out of them it seemed 
rose a taller figure with an ineffable face, all power and 
peace. Leslie Mackelt turned to it as dying men are 
said to turn to the symbol of the cross, and felt herself 
drawn as if physically by strong hands. 

“ Poor child ! ” said a deep sweet voice. “ Will you 
come with us, and rest? We are of the Order of the 
Seven Sorrows, and I am the Mother Superior.” 


CHAPTER XV 


“ I ought to have done more ; once my speech, 

And once your answer, and there, the end, 

And Edith was henceforth out of reach. 

Why, men do more to deserve a friend, 

Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise, 

Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face 
Why, better even have burst like a thief 
And borne you away to a rock for us two. 

In a moment’s horror, bright, bloody, and brief. 
Then changed to myself again — * I slew 
Myself in that moment; a ruffian lies 
Somewhere, your slave, see, born in his place ! ’ ” 


Robert Browning. 



‘RELAWNY found himself something of a lion 


«■* on board the Enterprise. Though her business 
was to carry stores to the various groups of islands, 
she had plenty of chance passengers unconnected with 
Missions, for she had actually been down to New 
Guinea this trip, and had touched at the Solomon 
Islands ; now she was going home, but the stormy sea- 
son having given a foretaste of its possibilities un- 
usually early, she had been somewhat driven out of 
her course, and it was due to this that she had sighted 
the flare of the beacon on the little islet that was sup- 
posed to be uninhabited. It was not one of a group, 
as Trelawny learned, though its nearest neighbours 
were the Marshall Islands and San Pedro. He had 
no idea that they were so far north — indeed, he had 
begun to fancy himself south of the Line — and a 


250 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

faint recurrence of his original terror crossed his mind 
at the realization of the awful force that had driven 
them there. No one on the Enterprise had any knowl- 
edge of the phenomenon that had overtaken the Aristo ; 
they might have heard of it, but storms were always 
occurring in those waters, and they remembered no 
loss of a British steamer, so possibly she had had a 
miraculous escape with some trifling damage. On 
the other hand, both passengers and crew were inter- 
ested in the Golden Gate , had seen her when she traded 
in those seas, and heard all about her disappearance. 

“ There she is ! ” exclaimed half a dozen voices as 
every man on deck hung over the port rail of the 
Enterprise to catch a glimpse of the wreck as they 
steamed slowly along the southern shore, for the 
morning was dead calm. “ I recollect her in San 
Francisco harbour !” — 

“ Golly ! but she’s just hung up ! ” — 

“ There’s a clean loss for P. Rudd & Co. ! ” — 

“ They knew she was gone — they’ve banked the in- 
surance by now ! ” — 

“ How long has she been missing? I never could 
find any record on board, the log was soaked with 
salt water and illegible,” said Trelawny. 

“ Why, she was reported as missing last July, and a 
month later three of her crew came back on another 
sailing vessel from Honolulu, where they’d been picked 
up. They said she’d met such weather as never hap- 
pened, and it knocked the sticks out of her ” 

“ Did they mention a fire ? ” 

“ Yes, they did — but every skipper on these routes 
who knew P. Rudd & Co. said they ought to have 
stuck to the ship, and only told that yarn of a fire to 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 251 

cover their orders. Copra’s so inflammable that if a 
ship’s going to be lost she is always reported as firing 
her cargo. Adam told the same lie when he wanted 
to raise dollars! The Golden Gate was well covered, 
and the companies fought the men’s evidence like Sac- 
ramento lawyers ! ” 

“ Well, it was true this time,” said Trelawny dryly. 
“ There was a fire — but if they had waited till she ran 
on the rocks the sea would have put it out for them, 
and they could have got ashore. Only three men 
saved, you say ? ” 

“ One of them was the Old Man. Never heard of 
any more.” 

Trelawny was silent, watching the Island gradually 
recede from view as they steered for the north-east. 
He had wondered if Gideon Ivermay had escaped, or 
if he were really standing in dead men’s shoes at the 
moment, for he had nothing on that did not belong to 
the ill-fated passenger. It seemed he need not con- 
cern himself about the ownership of the clothes, any- 
way, nor seek to return them if he could discover the 
whereabouts of the rightful wearer. They would 
serve his turn for the voyage, and he could see about 
a fresh outfit in San Francisco. Neither he nor Les- 
lie had ever discovered any memoranda or letters about 
the cabin, and the only clue to Gideon Ivermay’s 
identity was in one of his books, where in faded ink, 
below his name, was written “ Balliol College, Ox- 
ford.” 

The few passengers left on the Enterprise were all 
men, with the exception of the Nuns. The ship had 
started with a much fuller list — small officials wish- 
ing to get back to billets in the larger islands, German 


252 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

traders going to smaller groups, tourists whose love 
of adventure took them a little out of the beaten track, 
and inclined them to sample Polynesia rather than Los 
Angeles. One by one these units had drifted away, 
left behind on their destined islands, or persuaded to 
stay somewhere on the route for more than the few 
hours that the Enterprise remained, and chance the re- 
turn journey on a smaller vessel. The Nuns joined 
her at Bougainville, where they had been on a mission 
of inquiry for a place to establish a leper station — 
hence the mate’s assertion that they were looking for 
a desert island. Trelawny heard with a marvel of 
mixed loathing and respect for the religious fervour 
that could drive delicate women even to prospect for 
such a mission. But now every one was homeward 
bound, for the time at least, and the heterogeneous col- 
lection of travellers left on the Enterprise made the 
rescued man the centre of attraction. They were a 
little tired playing euchre in the evening, and hear- 
ing each other lie as to their adventures, and the 
story of Trelawny’s exile had the novel zest of a fairy 
tale. 

He might have borrowed clothes from every man 
on board had he wished, and smoked and drunk him- 
self sick at their expense. Every purse was open to 
him, and the hospitality of every man’s house when 
they reached port. He did not drink more than mod- 
erately, but he did satisfy his craving for the last few 
months for tobacco, and during the fortnight before 
they reached land he rarely had a clean tongue. Oh, 
it was good to talk to men again, and to hear the news 
of the world, even that corner of it from whence they 
came and which had but small interest for him! It 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 253 

was good to feel that he was of it once more, too, and 
could make plans for a future not destined to be passed 
in the solitude of unending seas! 

All these things rather engrossed Miles Trelawny’s 
immediate attention, and distracted him from thinking 
of his late companion. His feeling for her had not 
altered, it was too closely grown into the roots of his 
nature; but it was in abeyance, and not forced into 
the foreground of his mind by propinquity. For it 
chanced that he did not see Leslie Mackelt after she 
came on board, and fell, naturally it seemed, into the 
keeping of the Nuns. He heard the next day that she 
had turned faint and swooned after the Mother Su- 
perior had led her away out of reach of inquisitive 
eyes, and they had kept her in her cabin. He in- 
quired frequently, of course, and sent her messages, 
and was told that she had succumbed to a slight attack 
of fever that the Sisters were nursing devotedly. She 
would no doubt be all right in a few days, and in the 
meantime he realized that it was just as well that she 
should be in the care of the women on board — good 
women, whose lives were as blameless guardian 
angels’ — for her position as his sole companion on 
the Island gave her a possible interest to the men on 
board that was not desirable. He had known it 
vaguely with the return to civilization, but it was 
forced on his attention one evening in the smoking- 
room by a careless scrap of talk not intended for his 
ears. He had been sitting in a corner, waiting for 
some recent acquaintances to make up a poker party, 
when two men entered without seeing him, and began 
to talk. They had been drinking cocktails, which had 
loosened their tongues; but to do them justice thex 


254 the unofficial honeymoon 

meant no harm — their speech was the carelessness of 
a coarse sense of humour. 

“ Where’s the girl ? ” said one. 

“ Sick,” responded the other. “ And locked up 
amongst the Nuns!” 

“ I bet you that’s a change for her ! ” The first 
speaker laughed significantly. 

“ Well, it’s their job — rescue work,” said the sec- 
ond broadly. “ Guess she’s bound to have a kid.” 

“ What can you dam’ well expect ? Alone with that 
feller for six months ’ 

Trelawny’s first impulse was to spring up and take 
the speaker by the throat. He had actually half risen, 
when a new revelation stopped him. For if he and 
Leslie had been a few more months on the Island it 
might have been true. It was not his fault, anyway, 
that it was not. Within the bounds of a Universe 
peopled by their two selves this had seemed a natural 
law; but with the entrance of public opinion the con- 
ventional code of morals made it a subject for shrug- 
ging shoulders, and shocked him. Very few people 
realize how much morality depends upon an audience. 
It is for this reason that love scenes on the stage are 
always so pretty and impossible. The same rule ap- 
plies to books, the reader being always there as judge 
and jury. In the representation of love, therefore, 
there is a certain deliberation, whereas real passion is 
frequently headlong and inartistic. Trelawny was at 
the moment relieved that he could feel himself and 
Leslie virtuous, though his audience might be sceptical 
at first sight. He also saw the propriety of leaving 
the girl in the chaperonage of the Nuns, and making 
no effort to approach her. Of course, he would see 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 255 

and speak to her before they left the ship. He was 
bound to make arrangements for her journey to Eng- 
land, and to see her safely into the care of her friends. 
There might be certain embarrassments even about 
this, but it was an affair of the future. In the present 
he felt thankful that her slight ailment excused her 
appearance and kept her out of the way, even though 
it was misinterpreted in coarse minds. 

He was walking up and down the deck the next 
evening, in company with his friend the mate, who 
had come ashore on the Island, when they came face to 
face with a tall, black figure in company with one of 
the less important Nuns, and Trelawny recognized 
the Mother Superior. Both he and the officer ac- 
knowledged the Sisters, and Trelawny stopped to 
speak. 

“How is Miss Mackelt?” he said in his pleasant, 
easy manner, but the formal title sounded strange in 
his own ears. 

“ She has been very unwell/’ returned the Mother 
Superior at once, with a simple directness. She spoke 
in a voice whose beauty struck Trelawny impressively 
— the sort of voice that would make common words 
sound like blessing, and suggested the ring of a flaw- 
less bell. “ Poor little child ! She has had an experi- 
ence that was enough to unhinge most girls’ minds 
and bodies.” 

Trelawny recognized the truth of this, though he 
had not thought of it. But it startled him. 

“ She isn’t seriously ill ! ” he said. 

“ No, not seriously. But she has been very feverish 
and hysterical,” said the Nun composedly. “ Perfect 
rest is the best medicine for her, and to allow her to 


256 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 1 

get her mental balance again.” As she spoke she 
smiled, and Trelawny was suddenly aware of an over- 
mastering sense of beauty and strength combined — 
such strength as he had never met before in any 
woman. The Mother Superior’s face was so self- 
reliant and calm that its expression had caught his at- 
tention before he realized that she had been a beautiful 
woman, and indeed was so still. Her features were 
very nearly perfect, and her eyes beneath their wide 
brows extraordinarily dominant. He said involun- 
tarily, “ I am glad to leave Miss Mackelt in such good 
hands ! ” 

“You are content to leave her to us, then?” she 
said, with her compelling eyes upon his face. She was 
so tall that they were almost level with his own. 

“ Perfectly ! ” he answered heartily. 

The Mother Superior smiled, and passed on with the 
other Nun. 

Her name in the world had been Louise Malincourt, 
and she came of a very great English family indeed. 
Besides being a peer, her father had been a man of 
science, and had digged a little deeper into theories 
of life and death than most men. Louise had been 
brought up as nearly an atheist as is consistent with 
real knowledge, which is bound to reject atheism the 
more it learns of Law. It was after she was matured 
in her womanhood that she became a convert to the 
Roman Catholic faith, and she brought with her all the 
fervour of the convert and the powers of a very ex- 
ceptional woman in any sphere of life. She had at- 
tained to the position of Mother Superior of an educa- 
tional Order, but her capabilities reached out beyond 
to a final attainment of devotion and self-sacrifice 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 257 

with the urgency of the fanatic. She herself, and a 
certain number of her Order, had desired to establish 
a hospital and refuge for leprosy amongst the scat- 
tered islands of the southern seas, and to pass the rest 
of their lives in attending on and succouring the most 
loathsome of diseases, quietly giving up even the little 
that their devotional life had left them while in Eu- 
rope. It was a vocation so hard that the Mother Su- 
perior had rejected many of the volunteers even of 
her own Order, and had sifted out those fitted for the 
task as fine grain is sifted, to remove all chance of a 
poorer quality. 

Leslie Mackelt had never met with any one like this 
woman in all her starved and repressed life. The dig- 
nity, the elusive something that comes with fine breed- 
ing, the beauty, and the strength in Mother Ursula 
came upon the girl like a veritable hope of salvation 
at the moment when she had been rendered most vul- 
nerable. She would not have told her story to any 
other of the Nuns, pure-hearted and charitable though 
they were; but to confess to Louise Malincourt was 
like the relief of tears to a bitter grief. For some days 
Leslie had been slightly delirious, for the fever was 
a natural reaction after the physical and mental strain 
of the last weeks, and then the change from a per- 
fectly natural and healthy life to a certain confinement 
and more artificial food on board. With broken sobs 
and heaving terror the girl gasped out she knew not 
what of wickedness, clinging to the kind strong hands 
that seemed to save her from drowning in her own 
shame — she knew only that it was wickedness, and 
that she could not repent. This seemed to her a night- 
mare of punishment. 

17 


258 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

“ Oh, Mother, save me ! Make me really sorry — 
don’t let me feel that I am still mad ! — I must be 
lost ! I can’t feel anything but the longing — and the 
silence — and the sweetness ” 

“Hush! hush! my child,’’ said Mother Ursula 
calmly. “ It will come. This is nothing but a fever- 
ish dream. Beyond is God’s mercy ! ” 

Leslie looked up in the implacable beauty of her 
face with tortured eyes. It seemed that there at last 
was something to cling to that would not fail her, a 
faith like rock, a peace that might one day comfort. 
She had been singularly friendless all her life, thrown 
back upon herself, repressed and thwarted. Small 
wonder that the Mother Superior seemed to her an 
embodiment of the help for which she prayed. The 
difference in their religious views seemed no barrier 
at all ; things fell into their proper places, and she was 
never startled to think that this woman who was gain- 
ing an ascendancy over her was what her own people 
would have called a Papist. Mother Ursula never 
spoke of creeds to her; she seemed to respect Leslie’s 
religion, and, indeed, she was shrewd to appreciate 
the simple rule of life that lay at the root of Leslie’s 
narrow profession. It was far easier for her to un- 
derstand than Trelawny. He did not see, because he 
could not conceive, that the extreme strictness of Les- 
lie’s Methodist teaching was nearer the outer ring of 
Roman Catholicism than his own easy-going Protes- 
tantism, or the milder Nonconformists. He would 
have put them at opposite ends of the pole. To him 
Leslie’s pruderies were as frankly out of date as any 
ridiculous custom of the Middle Ages; but the Nun 
who could endure mortification for the sake of ab- 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 259 

stract sin in the world, could understand the theory 
that would not allow brother and sister to kiss after 
the age of puberty, by reason of carnal lusts. 

The Mother Superior made no least reference to con- 
version, and suggested none. The theory that Rome is 
for ever trying to obtain apostates by unscrupulous 
means is a bugbear of other creeds, less successful in 
such conversions. As a matter of fact, Rome is slow 
to accept a new member of the Church until thor- 
oughly convinced of the earnestness of the profession, 
and puts the candidate through serious tests before 
admitting him. Mother Ursula did nothing at all to 
influence Leslie’s mind except by example, and the 
natural phrases of her faith. But she had not been 
long in the girl’s society before she saw that the result 
would be another stray lamb gathered into her flock. 
She saw further, and with the glow of the zealot rec- 
ognized a temperament designed for martyrdom. The 
habit of introspection, the tenacity of conviction once 
she held it, the delicately fine conscience, were all 
types she read as easily as a book. All Catholics 
know the meaning of a “ born Contemplative.” Les- 
lie Mackelt was to Louise Malincourt’s eyes a born 
Religieuse. 

There was something further — a factor in the case 
from which a weaker woman would have shrunk, but 
that to the Mother Superior rather justified the ways 
of Providence. For Mother Ursula wanted money 
for her great work, her mission to the leprous. And 
here into her arms fell Leslie Mackelt with her mil- 
lions, as malleable clay to her influence, the tool of her 
will did she so choose. And after deliberate thought 
she did choose, no more afraid of any imputation of 


260 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


self-interest or avarice than she was of the change of 
creed which she foresaw would be the outcome of con- 
tact with her own personality, and the rupture with all 
Leslie’s own family in consequence. 

It would have been quite impossible to accuse 
Louise Malincourt of doing evil that good might come, 
because she would never have conceived that she was 
doing evil. She admitted very little authority as su- 
perior to her own, for she had always been the strong- 
est personality in the world. The Pope could dictate 
absolutely to her, because she was a Catholic and the 
Pope is infallible to her Church. Between her and 
this supreme power were many and many a lesser au- 
thority; but she had never really come in contact with 
interference, because her extraordinary individuality 
was recognized even at the Vatican. The Romish 
Church possesses a knowledge of its units, and keeps 
a comprehension of them, unequalled by any other ex- 
isting institution. 

Leslie never appeared on deck during the day, but 
at night, after it was deserted, the officer of the watch 
would sometimes see the tall, black figure with a 
smaller, slighter one, and the Mother Superior would 
pace up and down with her patient leaning on her arm. 
This only happened towards the end of the voyage, 
when the fresher winds of the north might act like a 
tonic on the girl. The Nuns had lent her clothes, 
though their stock was necessarily limited; but they 
had not enveloped her in the ample black that shrouded 
them, and so she went dressed like a novice, in the 
white undergown. As it chanced they never encoun- 
tered Trelawny, but they often talked as if his per- 
sonality haunted the conversation, and there was no 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 261 

difficulty for the older woman to read what was in the 
girl’s mind. 

“ I wish one always wanted to do what is right, 
Mother! ” she said wistfully on one occasion. “ It is 
so dreadful to wake up and suddenly realize how far 
one has strayed — it is like being out in the dark on a 
moonless night.” 

“ We carry our own lanterns, my child — the lamp 
of Faith.” 

“ Yes, but — some of us — don’t take oil in our 
vessels ! ” said the girl very low. “ And while the 
lamp is out we may lose our way, hopelessly.” 

“ No, not hopelessly.” 

“ It seems so, at the time. Oh, Mother, why are 
there so many pitfalls- when we are made so weak?” 

The Mother Superior looked down into the tragic 
young face with the sudden smile that warmed her own 
lips and eyes like sunshine. She could not herself 
have counted the number of girls who had been drawn 
to her by just that smile, or the young hearts that she 
had made her own. Only, in the well-known school 
of her Order, she was recognized to have the most 
marvellous and lasting influence upon pupils at their 
most impressionable age. 

“ Sometimes it seems as if we could only learn to go 
right by going wrong ! ” she said gently, and the sug- 
gestion helped Leslie as no “ word in season ” could 
have done. Half Mother Ursula’s power lay in her 
humanity. 

“ I wonder if that is true! ” 

“ It makes the dark places very luminous.” 

The two figures passed on, and the officer of the 
watch saw them no more. 


262 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


Trelawny was not up very early on the day they 
reached San Francisco. He had been talking late in 
the smoking-room the night before, not drinking, but' 
chatting as men will do on the last night of a voyage, 
knowing that on the morrow they will go their several 
ways, and may not meet again. When he went into 
the saloon for breakfast the boat was already in har- 
bour, and many of the passengers had gone on deck. 
He did not see any of the Nuns, though he was ac- 
customed to their black figures at a table reserved for 
them, but he supposed that, like others, they had gone 
on deck; and he presently went up himself, still in a 
leisurely fashion, for he thought that there was small 
chance of getting ashore at present. By the after 
hatch he found his friend the mate, superintending the 
passengers' baggage, and said good morning to him. 

“Cold after the tropics, isn't it?” said the officer 
with a laughing shiver. “ Say ! we ought to have 
waited to rescue you till May or June! ” 

“ No thanks — I’d rather buy a ready-made winter 
suit in San Francisco!” 

“ Your friends have gone ashore — got off as soon 
as the boat came in — hardly waited for the health 
officer. If we had had smallpox on board I guess 
they couldn’t quarantine the Mother Superior ! 
That’s a real marvellous woman — she’d make the 
Stars and Stripes dance a breakdown if it suited her! ” 

“Gone!” said Trelawny blankly. “And Miss 
Mackelt? ” 

“ She’s gone too. My ! she was looking peaky ! 
They’ll nurse her up all right though. Don’t you 
worry.” 

“ But where have they gone? Surely they left some 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 263 

word for me! ” said Trelawny in exasperation. “ I’m 
partly responsible for the girl, anyway. I’m bound 
to see that she reaches England safely! ” 

“ Oh, that’s all right — she’s going to travel with 
them. The Mother Superior’s a British subject, like 
yourself, and going back to her Convent. She’ll look 
after the girl for you — I guess they left a note with 
one of the stewards.” 

This was true, though Trelawny did not receive it 
until some hours later. It was very brief, and had 
neither beginning nor ending: 

“ I feel that I did very wrong in ever consenting to 
you breaking your engagement. But when we talked 
of this we were both in such extraordinary circum- 
stances that perhaps it was not as disloyal as it seems 
now. I never wanted to smirch your honour — in- 
deed, I never did. Perhaps now you have realized this 
also, and I need not have written. But I wanted you 
to be sure. I expect nothing from you, and I hold 
you to nothing. I only ask you to forgive me for ever 
having agreed to it. 

“ Leslie Mackelt.” 

There was no good-bye — no hint of where she 
was going — no conventional expression of friendship 
or hope to see him again. He recognized in the latter, 
at least, the extreme honesty that would not lie; they 
had lived too closely to be conventional with each 
other. With her disproportionate view of life she had 
not only recoiled from the thing she thought to be 
wrong, but had swept herself and all connection with 
her suddenly out of his life, to leave him free. That 


264 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

was Leslie Mackelt all over. Even the little stilted 
phrase about “ smirching his honour ” was reminis- 
cent of her love of high-flown literature. But it would 
have taken a woman to read between the lines, to know 
by instinct the unsteady hand that had written the 
bald words, the despair of the bitten lips, or — most 
tell-tale of all! — the stain upon the page where one 
great hot tear had fallen and been swept away. They 
dried with their own heat, those burning tears, and 
left the brown eyes seared and blistered as if with the 
breath of hell. Small wonder that Love is blind! 
His sight was forfeit long ago to aeons of such tears. 
And his votaries are weeping still. 


CHAPTER XVI 


“Ah, Love, could thou and I with Fate conspire 
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, 

Would we not shatter it to bits, and then 
Remould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire? ” 

Omar Khayyam. 

T RELAWNY was very angry. He did not take 
much account of Leslie’s childish little letter (it 
was just what he might have expected from her), but 
he felt that he was being made rather a fool of, for 
the time being at any rate. He had no doubt in the 
background of his mind that he should eventually do 
as he had intended, and make a clean breast of the 
whole matter to Edna, who would certainly release 
him from his engagement; but it was not a pleasant 
thing to look forward to, and he had no authority from 
Leslie to go upon, even — she had washed her hands 
of the matter, and left him to stand by himself. He 
did not alter his purpose; it had become too serious a 
thing between them, and he was not going to spoil his 
life or hers for the want of plain speaking. But he 
resented having to pay so heavily for his happiness 
before it was actually in his hands. It did not occur 
to him that the girl was paying too, more heavily, per- 
haps, in her own way. 

At any rate, he had lost sight of Leslie Mackelt in 
his immediate present, and instead of wiping her out 
of his memory it had the reverse effect of making 
265 


266 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

him think of her again. He could not find out by 
what route the Nuns had travelled, or if they had left 
San Francisco at all ; but he knew that they were going 
to England, and he half expected to find them on the 
train, or to fall in with them again on some part of the 
six days' journey. He took the most direct route he 
could — after some necessary delay before he could 
obtain money, and had cabled to his own people of 
his safety — and crossing the United States booked 
by the first boat at New York. But neither on the 
train journey, nor at the shipping agents, did he get 
the least news of the Sisters of the Seven Sorrows and 
Leslie Mackelt. They had vanished as completely as 
if the earth had swallowed them up, and Trelawny 
began to feel his first faint sense of injury from the 
Mother Superior for taking him so completely at his 
word and constituting herself Leslie's guardian in his 
place. 

He was bereft of his rights, for it seemed to him 
as if the girl had been put completely into his hands 
for a short period of her life to see what he would 
make of it, and then as completely and suddenly with- 
drawn by a Providence that mistrusted his methods. 
He could not exactly say that Providence was not, 
conventionally, in the right. Only, convention does 
not find a place in the morality of a desert island, 
and his conduct could not be judged by such stand- 
ards. 

At Liverpool he walked off the gang plank to meet a 
tall, grey-haired gentleman of military appearance, 
who looked hard into his face as if into the face of one 
risen from the grave, and put a shaking hand on his 
shoulder while he clasped the other. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 267 

“ Miles — my dear boy ! ” he said. “ We — we had 
given you up ! ” 

“Father!” — Major Trelawny was a boy again 
coming home from school, and startled into emotion. 
“ Why, father ! — you oughtn’t to have taken this long 
journey alone ! Where are the girls ? ” 

He spoke half confusedly, meaning his married sis- 
ters, who being older than himself were certainly not 
girls. But the sight of his old father (Colonel Sir 
Charles Trelawny was seventy) awoke all the tender 
home ties. The mother had been dead long years, and 
Miles was the only boy. The elder sisters had been 
good to him. 

“ Muriel’s children are down with the measles, and 
Anna is rushing back from the Continent to make sure 
you are really safe and sound!” said Sir Charles, 
blowing his nose rather hard and trying to laugh. 
“Miles, how did it all happen? I’m so bewildered 
still you must forgive my rather losing my head ! ” 

“ Come over to the hotel, father, and we’ll talk it 
out over dinner,” said the son affectionately. “ I’m 
all here, safe and sound, and shall have the honour of 
handing over a new British possession to the Govern- 
ment if they care to send a cruiser out to verify my 
statements. The Union Jack is there anyhow, if the 
hurricanes haven’t begun yet. Such a Jack, father! 
made out of a sheet and the Stars and Stripes and an 
old pair of serge trousers ! ” 

Father and son went off arm in arm, two tall, sol- 
dierly men, innately proud of each other’s company, 
and a little British in their very stability. The Colonel 
had been more shaken by his son’s death than he 
showed. He was not quite fit to travel all the way to 


268 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


Cornwall on the morrow, and Miles spent a day in 
nursing him and telling his tale anew, hearing in re- 
turn the other side of the story that had reached Eng- 
land. 

The ill-fated Aristo had not gone down, but she had 
received damage enough to disable her, and had 
crawled back on her own route until taken in hand by 
a passing steamer and towed into Sydney, where her 
passengers mostly re-embarked on a mail boat, and 
returned to England by the Atlantic route after all. 
There had been toll taken amongst them by the storm 
that had carried Trelawny and Leslie overboard — 
thirteen deaths were recorded, mainly from the third- 
class, who were amusing themselves on their own deck. 
Amongst them was Donald Mackelt, the missionary 
who was always to be found reading or preaching to 
the lower-class passengers. So Leslie had lost another 
brother. 

The Aristo had reported Miles Trelawny and Leslie 
Mackelt as drowned amongst the others missing, and 
the news had come to England as soon as it seemed 
certain that there was no chance of their having been 
picked up by a passing boat. Certain bodies had been 
recovered (Donald Mackelt’s was one of them), and 
one man had actually drifted on some wreckage car- 
ried overboard with him, and been rescued by a sailing 
ship. Miles Trelawny’s family had waited and hoped 
for three months before they would accept his doom 
as final. They had barely reconciled themselves be- 
fore the cable startled them as almost incredible, a 
mercy too wonderful for truth. 

, Edna Carrington, it seemed, was abroad. She had 
gone with her parents to Egypt as soon as Miles’ death 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 269 

was accepted, and having got as far as Khartoum they 
had not yet had time to return. But the news had, of 
course, been sent on to her, and, “ She will be back in 
a fortnight, we expect/’ Sir Charles said. The Car- 
ringtons were neighbours; they had a place in Corn- 
wall not far from High Trelawny, and the meeting 
could take place conveniently within their own gates. 
Miles did not ask even in joke if Edna had consoled 
herself. It was too soon, and the obligation pressing 
on him made such a jest unpalatable. It chafed him 
a little that he should be delayed yet longer in setting 
himself right with his own conscience, but it seemed 
that there was nothing to do but wait. In the mean- 
time he paid some necessary visits to London to report 
himself at the War Office, where the Authorities had 
posted him as missing, and obtain a fortnight’s leave 
to arrange certain business matters and to take up the 
threads of his life again; after which he returned to 
Trelawny to make glad his father’s heart with his ac- 
tual bodily presence. 

In London he had unfortunately caught cold. It 
was a chilly spring, and his long sojourn in hot cli- 
mates had not fitted him to face an English May. He 
was also, though he did not know it, suffering from 
much the same attack as Leslie when she got on board 
the Enterprise , the reaction from a simple life lived 
entirely in the open air under primitive conditions, in 
a rarefied atmosphere; only, the man being stronger 
than the woman, it had been longer deferred. Tre- 
lawny thought little of the chill, and neglected it. 
When Edna did return he drove over to see her in his 
own dog-cart in an east wind, and found himself shiv- 
ering in the drawing-room the while he waited her, 


270 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

though there was a fire. It was a pretty, low-ceilinged 
room, just the typical drawing-room of a country- 
house whose inmates run in and out all day, and do 
not keep it for company. Somebody’s work-basket 
and a riding-whip were lying side by side on a small 
table, and the chintz-covered chairs looked as if they 
were often sat in, by men as well as women. Tre- 
lawny smiled a little as he paced up and down, between 
the odds and ends that went to make it a delightful 
place, and thought how unchanged it was, and how 
changed he was in contrast, and tried not to be rest- 
less or to shiver. Certainly he must have taken a chill, 

and be feverish! It was a damned nuisance 

Then the door opened, and his fiancee came in. 

She was in her habit, having but just returned from 
a ride, and he remembered with a little pang his asser- 
tion to Leslie Mackelt that Edna looked at her best in 
her habit, and Leslie’s ill-disguised jealousy. It was 
quite true. Edna Carrington was a tall woman with 
a good figure, but that was not so much the reason as 
that the habit suggested exercise and fresh air, and 
both of these suggested Edna. She looked as if her 
element were soap and water, and there was a certain 
shrewd amusement in her blue eyes that completes the 
picture. She came straight up to Trelawny with frank 
pleasure in her welcome, and putting her hands on his 
broad shoulders lifted her face for him to kiss. Her 
cheek felt cool and soft and friendly. Trelawny put 
his arm round her waist and hugged her, with the en- 
thusiasm of perfect good-fellowship. 

“ I don’t know if I ought to kiss you, Ed,” he said, 
laughing. “ I believe I’ve got a beastly cold ! ” 

“ My dear Miles, I hope not ! That would be the 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 271 

crown of all your misfortunes. Do sit down and tell 
me everything ! I have felt my head spin ever since I 
got your father’s cable. I wrote from Khartoum — 
I hope you got it ! ” 

“ Yes, it was awfully good of you — a jolly nice let- 
ter — just like you!” Trelawny said affectionately. 
But his head was beginning to ache, and he felt dis- 
inclined for the talk that followed. Edna exclaimed 
and questioned as every one else had done, and teased 
him a little about his tete-a-tete on a desert island with 
another girl, and the way he must have lived — in 
rags, and eating nothing but shell-fish, of course! 
Then her father and mother came in and out, with no 
compunction about disturbing the lovers (they had 
been intimate friends for so many years that the po- 
sition would have been absurd), and the same string 
of questions and answers and desultory talk continued 
even through luncheon, punctuated by “ How excit- 
ing! ” — “ Now do tell us what you were doing when 
the ship rescued you ? ” — “ Had you a beard a yard 
long?”— “ Oh, I know you looked like Enoch 
Arden ! ” 

“ On the contrary, I was fairly civilized by then,” 
protested Trelawny. “ We had found the wreck of a 
schooner, and looted her for clothes and food. We 
had grown fat and dainty on bully-beef and ship’s bis- 
cuit by that time, I assure you. And I had shaved — 
on my honour, Edna ! ” 

“ I don’t believe you — you are ashamed of the 
spectacle you presented ! I should like to ask the peo- 
ple on board the rescue ship ! ” 

“ But, Miles — never mind Edna’s nonsense ! — tell 
us about the food. How did you cook it?” asked 


272 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


Mrs. Carrington, with the practical interest of the 
housekeeper. 

“ Over a wood fire, with big stones for our oven. 
That was the woman’s business more than mine.” 

“ Oh, the woman — your companion. What was 
she like?” 

“ She was a very nice girl. She had been very 
strictly brought up by Methodists, but she had splen- 
did pluck,” said Trelawny simply. “ I’ll tell you who 
she was — you may have heard of the Mackelt mil- 
lions? ” 

“ Oh, that old Scotch Canadian, who hoarded his 
money, and was never known to be very rich till he 
died?” said Mr. Carrington. “An engineer who 
came to own whole railways, wasn’t he ? ” 

“ Something of that sort. Well, this girl is the 
heiress.” 

“ My dear Miles, you don’t say so ! Why, she must 
be rolling in money.” 

“ Oh, she has a brother or so to share it, and to 
devote most of it to missions. They are deeply re- 
ligious people, and the fortune will probably go to the 
conversion of the heathen. But it did seem funny to 
be fixed there in the middle of the sea, and to think 
that that girl had millions that were absolutely of no 
use to her ! ” 

“ I suppose she bowed herself to the wisdom of 
Providence. Did she sing psalms all the time? ” 

“ She had no chance,” said Trelawny, turning it off 
with a laugh. “ She had her hands full with the cook- 
ing.” 

“ And what did you do ? ” 

“ I had to hunt for food. Also, I built a log-hut ! ” 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 273 

“ Did you ? Why, it grows more and more excit- 
ing. Mother, do you hear? Miles has really built a 
log-hut and lived in it. Oh, Miles, do show me how! 
Let us build a log-hut in the garden this summer, and 
camp out ! ” 

“ You had better ask Lord Thanet to join you. 
That sort of wild Indian business is just in his line,” 
said Mr. Carrington, laughing. “ We’ve got a neigh- 
bour at the Priory at last, Miles.” 

“No! Has Mr. Penrhyn let it? I believe I bet 
Edna a pair of gloves he never would.” 

“ Three pairs ! ” corrected Edna. “ I have hardly 
bought any since it was let. Lord Thanet took it last 
October.” 

“ He must be a curiosity ! The house is tumbling 
down, and full of rats and bats and vermin.” 

“ He is rather eccentric. He is a great man of sci- 
ence, and runs about with a butterfly net, catching 
things and classifying them. The bats are a joy to 
him — he has found a new species not known to exist 
in Great Britain ! ” 

“ By Jove ! ” said Trelawny blankly. “ He must be 
an original neighbour.” 

“ He is really an awfully nice fellow — very simple 
for all his honours. He is the youngest scientist who 
has ever been made a peer, isn’t he, Edna? And I 
don’t know how many letters there are after his 
name.” 

“ I have given up counting them,” said Edna gaily. 
“ He came up the Nile with us, Miles, and when the 
news came about you we left him there, sitting dis- 
consolately on a donkey with his long legs curled under 
the creature somehow. I expect he is there now ! ” 

18 


274 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

'‘Boor chap!” said Trelawny vaguely. He was 
grateful to the scientist for appearing in the conver- 
sation, since it spared him further descriptions of Les- 
lie. It did not seem the right moment to speak of her, 
and he shrank from the subject. Another day, when 
the first volley of questions and answers were over, 
when he could get Edna alone and things had settled 
down a bit, he would go straight to the root of the 
matter. Edna was very kind to him — unusually kind 
and merry and affectionate, as if she wanted to make 
up for all he had gone through, and their separation. 
He felt her sympathy and understanding through all 
the light talk, and was grateful for it, without looking 
for more subtle causes. But his head was really get- 
ting so confoundedly bad that he felt he should be 
glad to get home and lie down, and after a cup of tea 
he excused himself from staying to dinner and ordered 
the cart to drive him back. 

“ I’ll come over to-morrow and have a real talk with 
you, Ed,” he said, during a moment’s seriousness, 
when they were saying good-bye in the porch. “ There 
are lots of things I want to talk to you about — by 
ourselves, y’know.” 

“ Yes, do,” said Edna cordially. “ Father and 
mother will be out to-morrow afternoon. They are 
going to inspect the Priory, and see if anything can be 
done to make it look more habitable for the time being. 
Lord Thanet is coming home.” 

“ Are you all acting as caretakers for him ? ” said 
Trelawny, with a tired smile. “ He seems fairly help- 
less. People are jolly neighbourly about here, arn’t 
they? I like that.” 

“ Oh, we all run in and out of each other’s houses 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 275 

as of old. You will like Lord Thanet, Miles, and you 
will have something in common, for he has been in 
those parts you have just come from. I believe he 
was shipwrecked there himself last year — but he was 
not so lucky as to find a desert Island ! ” 

“ By Jove! was he? We must have a talk,” said 
Trelawny. “ Shipwrecks are becoming very common 
though, Edna — they will soon be unfashionable at 
this rate! To be lost in an aeroplane is the correct 
thing now, isn’t it? ” 

“ Or a study of fortifications that ends in a foreign 
prison ! ” said Edna, laughing. “ Good-bye, Miles. 
Take care of that cold. There’s an east wind.” 

Trelawny swung himself into the cart and drove 
away, leaving her standing there in the porch with the 
comfortable, English country house as a background. 
It was a very domestic picture, and intensely civilized. 
Edna suited it as she stood with her hand shading her 
eyes, looking after the cart. There was about her a 
certain clearness of mental vision as well as physical, 
and she was long-sighted. She went back into the 
house, and found her mother knitting placidly in the 
drawing-room. 

“ I am afraid Miles is going to be ill! ” she said in 
a direct fashion of her own. “ I wish he would have 
gone home in the brougham instead of that open cart.” 

“ My dear Edna, I hope not ! ” — Mrs. Carrington 
nearly dropped a stitch. “ I thought him looking par- 
ticularly well.” 

“ He is very brown,” said Edna critically. “ But 
that is, naturally, sunburn. And he has not an ounce 
of spare flesh about him, which is the result of 
healthy hard work, I suppose. But his eyes are 


276 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

queer, and he looks to me as if he were sickening for 
something.” 

Miles was sickening for influenza. A message came 
over the next day to say that he was sorry he could 
not keep his appointment in the afternoon, but his 
temperature was ioi. It was not a very bad attack, 
and he had splendid arrears of health behind him to 
pull him through. It would not have kept him in bed 
more than a week if he would have been patient, but 
he got up too soon when he felt a little better, and the 
result was a fresh chill, a relapse, and pneumonia. 
For six weeks Major Miles Trelawny was laid up 
again, with doctors and nurses in attendance, and at 
one point in the illness his condition was considered 
serious, though his sound constitution and splendid 
vitality left the doctors in no great fear of his ultimate 
recovery once they could turn the corner. 

He had more nurses than the professional ones, for 
both his sisters stayed in the house part of the time, 
and Edna came over almost daily to see him when she 
was allowed, while his father was as devoted as any 
of the women. But despite their familiar, pleasant 
presences, he was restless and dissatisfied, and longed, 
with the unreasonable longing of the sick, for a touch 
and voice that werfc far less trained and reliable — 
for the little girl who had nursed him on the Island 
when he had twisted his ankle and bruised his throat 
with the giant creeper. Leslie Mackelt had nursed by 
instinct, not by rule, and had soothed and stimulated 
him as much by her personality and the new interest 
he had taken in her, perhaps, as by her ministrations. 
But he turned like a fretful child to the memory of her 
willing hands and patient voice, and the coaxing and 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 277 

petting she had lavished on him just for the time 
that he was helpless. She had been fiery enough when 
he was about again — exacting in her turn, ready to 
retort, by no means indulgent to his whims. But he 
wanted even the sting of her presence, and the provo- 
cation she brought him — anything but this deadly 
monotony of beef-tea and level kindness! The 
women round him were so cheerful, so rational, so 
logically well-balanced! He found himself naturally 
seeing their point of view as similar to his own, until 
he longed to be contradicted. He had told Leslie once 
that Edna Carrington was far more suited to him than 
she was, more sensible and level-headed and normal- 
minded. He began to see that that was just why she 
was not suited to him, being cast in the same mould as 
himself. He wanted the sharp contrast even to Les- 
lie’s most tiresome moods — a thing of fire and spirit 
rather than solid material character. He and Leslie 
balanced each other, however fiercely they might dis- 
agree. And, oh ! beyond all reasoning and arguments 
•for choice, he loved her and longed for her, as man 
has for woman from time immemorial. Lying there 
on his sick-bed, with the fever chasing pictures through 
his brain, he saw her from their first consciousness of 
each other on the shore, to his last sight of her fall- 
ing into the arms of the Mother Superior — Leslie as 
a boyish figure with pale, unhealthy face and narrow 
chest; Leslie hardening under the work he put upon 
her, rebellious, resentful, but always advancing in 
health and strength; Leslie suddenly opening into 
womanhood like a bud in the sunshine opening to 
blossom; Leslie at last caught with the fire of his 
passion, and blending her very soul with his — and he 


278 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

caught his own breath at the memory, and quivered 
again with the long-dead glow and sweetness. In the 
first shock of returning to conventional boundaries he 
had been thankful that they were still man and maid, 
and that he had not despoiled her of her girlhood. 
Now the old elementary instincts of his virility arose 
in him again, stripped of acquired theories, and he 
wished savagely that he had used violence — that he 
had played the ruffian to her for a minute to bind her 
to him for evermore — a cruel kindness, that at least 
might have hindered her slipping out of his life like 
this. For where was she? What least clue had he 
for recovering her? Nothing but the fact of her peo- 
ple living in Scotland, and herself being the heiress to 
the Mackelt millions. She had never been very com- 
municative about her own life, lest the details should 
bore him, and he could not recollect her having men- 
tioned a single town where she had lived save Edgsbas- 
ton, and with that she dropped all connection when 
her aunt died. Her family’s locality in Scotland he 
was sure he had never heard. The money that made^ 
the name of Mackelt of interest to the public, and the 
Convent of the Seven Sorrows which he could find 
through any Roman Catholic community, were all that 
he had by which to trace her. 

It was the Mackelt millions which had been one 
factor in deterring Trelawny from pursuing his inten- 
tions at once with regard to the girl. He belonged to 
a type of man who intensely dislikes the obligation of 
marrying an heiress. He would, of the two, infinitely 
have preferred his wife to be dependent upon him, and 
though he had accepted the idea of Edna’s moderate 
fortune with the engagement to her, the enormous 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 279 

wealth forced upon him with Leslie Mackelt was a very 
different matter. People would say that he had taken 
advantage of the girl’s helplessness, stranded with him 
on the Island, to induce her to marry him — particu- 
larly in the light of the broken engagement that must 
come first. It was a small thing compared to the 
necessity of a man for his natural mate, were it 
weighed in such a huge balance, but it loomed large 
from a sick-bed. He tossed and turned and fumed 
over his misfortunes and the sorry tricks that Fate 
was playing him, and retarded his own recovery 
thereby. Not the least of his troubles was that he 
could tell nobody until he had confided in Edna. His 
sisters could not think why Miles, usually so even- 
tempered and reasonable, should be such an impossible 
patient ; but they attributed it to the comfortable theory 
that “ all men were bad invalids,” and bore with him 
with a good-nature that he found maddening. All 
that his enforced inactivity taught him was that as 
soon as he could stand on his feet again, shaping his 
own life by his own will, he must find the girl he had 
allowed to escape him, and hold her with strong hands 
to the day of his death. 

It was May when Trelawny was taken ill; it was 
the end of June before he was about again, and able 
to tackle the first part of his task. The roses were out 
at High Trelawny, and nodded and swung round the 
smoking-room window when Edna came over for a 
private talk with him. He had asked her to come, 
excusing his remissness in not going to her by the fact 
of his convalescence, and also that they were less likely 
to be interrupted in the practically bachelor house 
where his father and he were living together. The 


280 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


married sisters had gone home to their respective 
husbands, and Miles was promoted to doing without a 
nurse. Edna responded to his appeal as frankly as was 
natural to her. She rode over one sunny morning on 
her bay mare, left her at the stables, and was sitting 
in Sir Charles’ own chair when Miles entered the 
smoking-room, a little less brown than he had been six 
weeks ago, but very much his own self. 

They shook hands in silence, and then by a simul- 
taneous impulse they both spoke at once, and in the 
same words : — 

“ I have a confession to make ! ” 

Then they both stopped and laughed, for they had 
the same sense of humour. 

“ Ladies first! ” said Trelawny. 

Edna sat down on the arm of the chair from which 
she had risen, and he took up a position opposite to her 
on the solid oak table, one foot dangling, and the other 
resting on the floor, for he was a tall man. Their eyes 
were so nearly on a level that they looked straight in 
each other’s faces. 

“ I ought to have told you before, Miles — when 
you first came home — only I was not sure — and then 
you got ill,” Edna began bravely. She never moved 
her clear, wholesome eyes from his, but she went on 
more slowly. “ I want to break our engagement ! ” 

His first thought naturally was that she had guessed 
his intention, and simply forestalled him to make it 
easier. It was generally like Edna, but her next 
words contradicted the impression. 

“ Wait a minute — let me get it all out, and have 
done with it. Last autumn, as we told you, the 
Priory was let — to Lord Thanet — and I got to know 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 281 


him very well. But there was nothing but friendship 
between us until we heard of your being drowned from 
the Aristo — I knew I liked him very much and he 
liked me, but he was so different to every one else, I 
never seemed able to fit him into my life as a man 
a woman might marry.” (The Vision of the elderly 
scientist that former references to him conjured up 
rendered Trelawny dumb. It was the incongruity of 
this Lord Thanet and his butterfly net and Edna in 
her habit that took his breath away, as much as the un- 
expectedness of her confession,) “ Then we went to 
Egypt,” the girl went on, “ and he joined us, and I 
began to like him all over again — in a new way — 
only just then we got your father’s cable, and we had 
to come home, and I didn’t know if I were standing on 
my head or my heels! He had never said anything 
that I could be sure of — you know ” 

Trelawny’s kind, friendly eyes were still meeting 
her own. He was trying to keep the amazement out 
of them, and to be simply sympathetic. It would be 
his turn for the difficulties of explanation presently ! 

“ I told you he was coming home — that day you 
lunched with us — as we were saying good-bye. I 
didn’t know what to say — whether I ought to tell 
you anything — but you had been through a lot — and 
he had never told me. . . . But since you have 
been ill he has come back, and I fought it all out with 
myself, and I decided that when you got well I would 
ask you to let me go ! ” 

“ And Thanet?” said Trelawny gently. “ Has 
he ” 

“ Yes ! ” she said, and flung up her head defiantly 
with a quick blush — love’s flag of defence for the 


282 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


absent. “ We didn’t mean to — either of us — but 
we had a misunderstanding and in the heat of the 
moment it slipped out! I know it sounds dishonour- 
able while you were lying here ill — but I can’t ex- 
plain — things happen so quickly ” 

She broke down and turned her face away with 
unusual consciousness. Trelawny felt more than ever 
in a dream. Edna shy — and for an elderly scientist ! 
Edna struggling for words to express a situation that 
he could understand only too easily, did she but know ! 
Before he answered in words he took her left hand 
gently in his own, and drawing the engagement ring 
from her finger slipped it into his pocket. Then he 
kissed her. 

“I shall give it back to you, you know, as a wed- 
ding-present, when you are married to Thanet. You 
chose the stones and the design, and I shouldn’t like 
anybody else to have it. And now for my own con- 
fession.” — He sat up and squared himself a little, for 
he was conscious that it would sound much worse than 
hers, though it led to the same end. “ I was waiting 
too, to lay my own case before you, and though you’ve 
cut the knot for us both I should feel a skunk if I 
didn’t tell you the truth.” 

She looked up quickly with her far-seeing eyes, be- 
fore he could speak. 

“ Miles, you’ve fallen in love ! — with somebody 
you cared for more than me? ” 

“ Yes — I’m afraid so,” he said soberly. 

“ Who is it ? ” She was a little curious, but not 
piqued. Her life was too full of the new feeling to 
leave any room for the meanness of jealousy. 

" That girl who was with me on the Island. Oh, I 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 283 

know it sounds like propinquity — but it wasn’t that. 
It was something more, or it wouldn’t have lasted. I 
want her more now than I did then — and Heaven 
knows that was bad enough ! ” he added with a long 
soft breath that made Edna look at him much as he 
had looked at her — as at a new man, whom she had 
never known. 

“ Did you tell her so ? ” she said simply. 

“ Did I not ! — Yes, I know I was wrong, but we 
never thought we should get off that place again, you 
know — and there was all our lives to live out ” 

He stopped rather helplessly, conscious that he was 
trying to justify a plea which he could not actually 
state to Edna. The situation that had seemed “ in- 
evitable ” on a desert island was one that could not 
be mentioned in his own house in England to the 
carefully guarded girl with whom he was on such 
frank terms — with just such reservations. He could 
not even tell if she had vaguely guessed what he half 
hinted, by her next words. 

“ What did she say ? ” 

“ She said, even under these circumstances, that I 
must not break my word. But things got to such a 
pass at last that I broke down the barriers between us 
— I made her promise to marry me if we ever got 
home, and I could lay the case straight before you. 
She hadn’t a chance, you see — not really — a woman 
doesn’t hold out for ever if she cares for a fellow ! ” 

There was the darker truth here again — the truth 
that might have been. But Edna took the surface 
meaning. 

“ Did you make love to her? ” 

“ Yes,” he said briefly. 


284 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

“Well, go on. What happened? Where is she 
now? ” 

“ I don’t know.” The words struck him as ridicu- 
lous, coming after his last acknowledgement. “ When 
we were taken off at last by that ship there was a party 
of Nuns on board, and they took care of her. The 
Mother Superior was an extraordinary woman — a 
‘ personage/ a great lady, whatever she had happened 
to be — you know what I mean. She impressed me 
awfully, even in the few words I had with her.” 

Edna had all the English girl’s educated distrust of 
Rome when she has been brought up in the Protestant 
atmosphere of a Protestant neighbourhood, and comes 
of a Protestant family with Protestant traditions. 
Her straight brows contracted as though she met a 
mental Bogey, and in spite of her common-sense she 
spoke out of prejudice. 

“ Wasn’t it rather rash to leave her in their care ? 
These people get such an extraordinary influence ! ” 

“ Well, it would be a very good influence, anyway ! ” 
said Trelawny, rather amused. “ I thought it the best 
thing that could have happened at the time. But I 
must say they rather exceeded my expectations. 
When we got into San Francisco she went off with 
them early in the morning, without a word of warning. 
She had been seedy on the boat — something like I 
have been — and I had not seen her since we went on 
board.” 

“ You mean to say she walked off with the Nuns, 
and never said good-bye ? ” 

“ She left me a note, going back to all her original 
arguments — that it was wrong to go back on my 
word, and I was to return to England and marry you, 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 285 

and to forget her, etc. Just the sort of thing a girl 
with a morbid conscience would write, without much 
thought for the man.” 

“ Or for the other woman ! ” Edna flushed a lit- 
tle. “ How nice for me when I found out — as I was 
bound to do sooner or later ! ” 

“ Leslie is not very far-seeing. She rushes at what 
she thinks her duty like a little bull in a china shop, 
and the result is chaos, for her as well as for other 
people, poor little soul ! ” He smiled and sighed to- 
gether, and the girl watching him softened. She 
caught a mental picture of a nature very different to 
either Miles’ or her own. 

“ But tell me,” she said earnestly, leaning forward 
with her riding-whip bent between her strong young 
hands in her excitement, “ what has become of her 
since then ? ” 

“ I tell you I don’t know. I have never had a line 
from her. I suppose she went to Scotland to her own 
people. The Nuns brought her over to England, I 
expect.” 

“ But my dear Miles, it is two months and more 
since you returned yourself! Do you mean to tell me 
that you have had no communication with this girl 
since you left that Island? Haven’t you made any 
inquiries? tried to find her? written to her?” Her 
words came more quickly in a gathering indignation 
that took Miles Trelawny utterly by surprise. He 
had looked at the matter quite rationally, from a 
man’s point of view. Edna flashed round to the 
woman’s. 

“ You made love to her — you asked her to marry 
you if I would release you (a foregone conclusion) — 


286 THE UN OFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

you seem to have done every conceivable thing you 
could to make her care for you, in spite of which it 
was she who held out against you, she who reminded 
you of your honour, she who tried to creep out of 
your life again and leave you free! And after all this 
you practically dropped the matter and let her go. 
My dear Miles, what do you suppose she thinks of 
you? ” 

“ Well, what on earth was I to do? ” said Trelawny 
hotly. “ I couldn’t lay the matter before you while 
you were still abroad, nor the minute you came back, 
and I’ve been laid up ever since. Where was I in the 
wrong? ” 

“I don’t know — but I know if I were a man I 
would have done something. And I should be horri- 
bly afraid now lest I had lost her. I hope those Nuns 
have not made her a Roman Catholic and induced her 
to take the veil ! ” 

But Trelawny laughed at the idea. “ Leslie was a 
strict Methodist — you ought to have heard her 
views! They would have had more chance of con- 
verting a Jew or a Buddhist ! ” 

“ You don’t know. You say yourself what an ex- 
traordinary woman the Mother Superior was, even 
from the little you saw of her. I think you’ve waited 
quite long enough, Miles. I should put the matter into 
the hands of Scotland Yard — advertise — find out 
where that Convent is, and force the Nuns to tell you 
what they did with the girl. But you ought to do 
something.” 

Trelawny looked at her with a little reluctant ad- 
miration. She was so full of vital energy and self- 
reliance that she made him feel invertebrate. He had 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 287 

hesitated; he acknowledged it in his heart. Circum- 
stances had seemed to necessitate it, but he knew that 
if he had been really keen on not losing sight of Leslie 
Mackelt that he would have managed things better. 

“ I don’t quite understand you,” said Edna honestly, 
lifting her blue eyes to his moody face. “ So many 
things seem to weigh with men — there is only one 
vital issue to women. Do you suppose if Gideon Iver- 
may had been on a desert island with me that I should 
have calmly let him drift out of my life while I con- 
sidered as to how best to express my feelings to you ? ” 
Trelawny suddenly put his hand up to his head as if 
bewildered. “ I beg your pardon,” he said. 
“ Who?” 

“ Lord Thanet — I told you I cared for him not 
half an hour ago! ” — Edna was reproachful. 

“ But who did you say ? ” 

“ I said Lord Thanet.” 

“ No, you didn’t. You said ” 

“ Oh, I said Gideon Ivermay — he was Sir Gideon 
before they made him Lord Thanet.” 

Trelawny drew a long breath. “ It seems I was 
bound to stand in his shoes ! ” he said grimly. “ I 
believe I am in debt to him for the loan of his clothes 
and personal effects, Edna! Did you tell me he was 
wrecked in those latitudes? Well, we must have 
found the schooner — the Golden Gate — for his be- 
longings were about the only ones uninjured on the 
ship, and we made excellent use of them.” 

“ He had been travelling all around the world, study- 
ing geo-morphology, and geology, and all the other 
ologies,” said Edna breathlessly. “ It is quite possi- 
ble.” 


288 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


“ It is quite certain. His name was in some of the 
books which Leslie took, and his initials on the clothes 
which / took ! ” 

“ I will bring him over to tea, and you shall talk to 
him yourself, ,, said Edna with prompt determination. 
“ He had been grieving over the loss of his collection 
on that voyage. You see, he was not travelling for 
any learned Society — he was on a holiday, and so he 
was collecting for a little museum of his own. He 
saved so little! I believe there were several varieties 
of conglomerate rock (whatever that awful thing is!) 
and the larvae of beetles. You didn’t see anything 
like old stones and chrysalises, did you, Miles? ” 

“ I expect they were amongst the things I left be- 
hind in the cabin,” said Trelawny guiltily. “ But I 
have several pairs of his flannel trousers by me, if 
you think they would be any consolation ? ” 

“ I think the books are dearer. Did you bring 
them away? They were relics of his college days. 
Perhaps we can recover his books, anyway.” 

“ Ah, but there again we want Leslie Mackelt,” 
said Trelawny. “ She has his books, for I am pretty 
sure she would not part with them.” 

The identity of Lord Thanet with the Gideon Iver- 
may of the Golden Gate rather alleviated any awk- 
wardness in the meeting of the two men. It is difficult 
to be restrained with a fellow mortal when you have 
borrowed his boots and worn his trousers ! Moreover, 
“ G.I.” was such an extraordinary revelation that Tre- 
lawny could not approach him on the level of the 
everyday man. His personal appearance alone was 
disarming. Miles had known that he was a tall man 
from the cut of his clothes, but he was unprepared 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 289 

for the endless length of body that seemed to be pre- 
sented to him when Edna introduced them. Lord 
Thanet was possibly fifty, but actual years were not a 
thing that most people attributed to him. He had a 
great quantity of loose white hair — really white, not 
grey, and extremely thick — which threatened to fall 
over his excellent forehead and into his quizzical eyes, 
and his whole clean-shaven face was distinctly hu- 
morous. He gave Trelawny the feeling of a reserve 
of strength for all his very gentle manner; yet when 
he pushed the white locks out of his eyes with the 
back of his hand, which he had a way of doing, he 
was almost childlike. 

“ I have been most impatient to meet you,” he said 
calmly to Trelawny. “ When you have been hating 
the existence of a man hard for six months, it is really 
quite a relief to see him in the flesh ! ” 

Trelawny found himself obliged to laugh. “ Some- 
thing material to tilt against, eh ? ” he said. “ It is 
rather curious that we have known each other’s names 
for so long! ” 

“ It seems fitting that you should sit on a barren 
shore and curse me for the state of my wardrobe, 
while I sat on a donkey in Upper Egypt and cursed 
you for needing clothes or anything else that proved 
you alive ! ” 

“ I could have done with a few more shirt-studs,” 
said Trelawny jokingly. “ Otherwise I was truly 
grateful.” 

“ I don’t know how it is,” Lord Thanet admitted 
plaintively, “but they always get mixed up with the 
specimens. I had some calcareous mud that was really 
peculiar in those parts, composed of coccoliths and 

19 


29 o THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

tunicate spicules, with some calcium carbonate. If 
you had not so ruthlessly thrown my coccoliths away, 
you would probably have picked up one or two fairly 
whole studs.” 

“ A task for Edna in the future, to keep them 
sorted,” said Trelawny good-humouredly. “ I’m 
awfully sorry I did not keep your loot. To tell the 
truth ” — he laughed shamefacedly — “ we thought 
some of it was stuff you had put amongst your clothes 
to keep out moth ! ” 

Lord Thanet threw up his white head and shouted 
with laughter. He certainly had a boy’s laugh and 
a most charming personality. Moreover, it was im- 
possible to feel jealous of him. He gave Trelawny an 
easy, rambling account of his journey about Melanesia 
and Polynesia, and described the natives with a rich 
sense of humour. When the crew of the Golden Gate 
took to the boats he had saved nothing, except his 
notebooks. All his data, he said, he had managed to 
take with him (which explained the fact that Trelawny 
and Leslie had searched in vain for any diary anent 
the voyage), but he was evidently grieved about his 
precious collections. 

“ It would be almost worth while to charter a ship 
and go out to your Island to board the old Golden 
Gate and recover my specimen,” he said thoughtfully. 
“ What do you say, Edna ? Shall we have an official 
honeymoon there, for the unofficial one that was 
forced on Trelawny? ” 

“ There’s the log-hut, anyway ! ” said Edna gaily. 
“ But we should want a pilot.” 

Trelawny turned rather abruptly away from them. 
A sudden vision of the warm white sand, the caves, 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 291 

the little hut, and the dark woods behind, swam before 
him in a mist of pain. The idea of some one else in 
such surroundings was revealed a sacrilege. 

“ I am afraid the schooner will break her back in 
the next storm, and go all to pieces,” he said carelessly. 
“ We left very little aboard her worth the saving.” 

“ Except Gideon's bits of rock and half-dead in- 
sects ! ” said Edna derisively. “ Oh, Miles, do assure 
him that his precious books are safe, and he may get 
them back some day ! ” 

“ But I have got them back!” said the scientist 
slowly, and his mobile face grew suddenly graver as 
he caught the expression on theirs. “ It was a re- 
markable thing, and I have not had time to tell you, 
Edna. You know I went to Oxford for two days last 
week (I am a Fellow of Balliol,” he explained to 
Miles, “ and have my quarters there — till I marry,” 
with a smile at Edna). “ Well, I found a parcel had 
been sent there some weeks ago, and when I opened it 
it proved to be all my old books that I had with me 

aboard ” He stopped because of Trelawny’s 

breathless lips and hungry eyes turned to him suddenly. 
It was Edna who spoke, hurriedly. 

“Did she write? Did you find out where they 
came from? ” 

“ No, there wasn’t a single line. The books were 
very carefully packed and the parcel was registered. 
I looked to see if I could find out where on earth 
they had come from, as it was like a resurrection. 
But the postmark was Kendal, and I knew no one 
there. I naturally thought, when Edna told me about 
your finding the Golden Gate ” he added, turning to 
Trelawny, “ that you had sent them.” 


292 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

“No, not I,” said Trelavvny with dry lips, and a 
difficulty in speaking that made him dully surprised 
himself. “ It must have been Miss Mackelt. I am 
surprised that she parted with them, somehow. But 
I suppose she thought they were not hers to keep — 
that would be reason enough, for her.” 

“ But how did she find out that Gideon was Lord 
Thanet, as you did not know, Miles ? ” exclaimed 
Edna. “ And the address at Oxford too! ” 

“ They were quite correctly addressed/’ said Lord 
Thanet. He was still watching Trelawny’s face with 
his gentle, intent eyes. “ I examined the wrappings 
carefully, because I should have liked to write and 
thank the sender, and have asked her — him, as I 
supposed — how he came into possession of them. 
They had been faithful friends — I took them all 
round the world. Most of them were bought in my 
college days, when I was a very young man! But I 
can still read Swinburne and Omar and old Brown- 
ing after a hard day’s work. They are like undeserved 
dessert after a plain, wholesome dinner ! ” 

“ Kendal ! ” said Edna, knitting her straight brows. 
“ At least we have the name of a place to go on at last. 
Miles, do let’s do something, even if it is only to put 
a detective on the track, and represent Miss Mackelt as 
a repentant criminal who has returned Gideon’s worth- 
less books after months of wanton theft! ” 

Trelawny did not laugh this time. He felt so des- 
perately inclined to try some such medium as a for- 
lorn chance of finding Leslie. What he was going to 
do he did not quite know, for to take the long journey 
up to the north merely to ask the postal authorities if 
they remembered who registered a parcel to Oxford 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 293 

weeks ago was obviously a wild-goose chase. And the 
pursuit and chase of one of the biggest heiresses in 
Great Britain was hardly a matter in which to ask help 
of the police. He was beginning to have a dim suspi- 
cion too that he was not likely to get any information 
from the Convent of the Seven Sorrows even when he 
located it. With an idea of doing that vague “ some- 
thing,” however, that Edna urged on him, he went 
again to London, and in the natural course of things 
called at the War Office. He was bound to rejoin his 
own regiment, which was at Colchester, in another 
week’s time, and had not much leisure at his disposal 
now in which to pursue the matter personally. But 
there was a letter awaiting him at the War Office — 
it had been there for some weeks — a thick closely 
written letter that made him catch his breath, though 
he had only seen the handwriting once before, in the 
brief missive given to him when he left the Enterprise. 
Leslie Mackelt had written to him at last. The riddle 
had solved itself. 

He drove to his Club, being the quietest place he 
could think of in London, and in a deserted corner of 
the card-room he sat down to read the desperate, hope- 
less pages. It was all written in short sentences, as 
if she could not wait for a turn of phrase such as had 
amused and irritated him in her former letter. No, 
this was not a morbid-minded girl trying to “ do 
right,” and talking stiffly about smirching a man’s 
honour the while she sobbed in self-pity over her love 
as over a broken toy. Trelawny had read something 
between the lines that time, if not all. There was no 
occasion this. The whole bitter truth was there. 
This was outcry, and a woman had written it. 


CHAPTER XVII 


“For us and love 

Failure ; but when God fails, despair.” — Robert Browning. 

U 1VT Y dear Miles, — 

I like to call you so just this once. It 
is a relief to write it. It would be a relief to say it to 
you — ‘ my dear Miles/ But I never shall again. 
This is the last time I shall write to you or speak to 
you. It seems almost like speaking to you. And I 
am going to tell you all the truth, because it is the last 
time. I don’t know if you will ever get this letter. 
If you do not it does not matter, even though some- 
body else reads it. I shall be just as much out of the 
world as if I were dead. And when you are dead it 
does not matter to you what happens in the world. 

“ I want to tell you first that I have become a 
Roman Catholic. It is the one thing that has dead- 
ened the pain. It comforts me. I am sure it is the 
real religion. It is all so beautiful. And they for- 
give you everything. I wanted to be a Catholic almost 
at once, but they would not let me. They said I must 
be really convinced. But when we got to England 
I was put under instruction, and now I am a member 
of the Church. 

“ There is only one thing that troubles me, in spite 
of religion. I can’t be sorry that I love you. I can’t ! 
I can’t ! I loved you all in the wrong way, from the 
first. When I told Mother Ursula she showed me 
294 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


295 

that. I thought I could learn to love you in her way. 
But I can’t ! I can’t ! I never knew any one like 
Mother Ursula. She is so good and so wonderful. 
I feel her so much that I can’t even write about her. I 
should like to be like her in all ways. I want to be 
always with her now. When I am away from her it 
all comes back to me, and I am mad again. I know I 
am wicked, but I want you and nothing else. Every 
bit of me seems to ache for you, and my heart and my 
brain are like fire. If I could see you just once more 
I think it wouldn’t hurt me so. But I know you won’t' 
come now. You have gone back to that other girl, and 
you have forgotten me. It is quite right. I knew it 
must happen. But I am so unhappy that I think it 
makes me more wicked. I don’t want to think of you 
with her. I don’t want to think that you are touching 
her as you did me, and speaking to her as you did to me. 
If I think of it it makes me want to drag you away, 
wrong or right. 

“ I am going with Mother Ursula and the Nuns out 
to Polynesia again. They are going to establish a 
leper station. I must tell you quickly, for it is too 
horrible. Most of them have already undergone hos- 
pital training. They are giving up the rest of their 
lives to their mission, and I am going too. I can’t 
leave Mother Ursula, and I feel that I ought to go 
and give myself to God also. But I am so frightened ! 
I wake in the night sometimes and see dreadful things 
that I shall have to see in reality. I can’t bear it. 
But I am going. They will not let me join the Order 
at once. Mother Ursula says I must not even be a 
probationer in a hurry. I am going out as a lay Sister 
or helper. They have got leave to take our Island 


296 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

from the Government. And I have given them the 
money that they want. When I first thought of the 
Island for that I felt I could not let them go there. 
I cried and stormed. I was mad again. They said 
it was hysteria, and Mother Ursula just sat and looked 
at me. I knew I was wrong then. Everything in me 
seemed to give way at once, and I said I would help 
them with money, if they could take me with them. 
It has been settled very quickly. Mother Ursula has 
so many friends and relations connected with the Gov- 
ernment. After all, what does it matter ? I have lost 
you, and I only loved the Island because of you. 

“ I hope I shall catch the disease and die very 
quickly. You always take it after a time. The Nuns 
all know that they are going to die. But it is so loath- 
some! I am deadly sick when I think of it. I am 
afraid. And to grow like that on our Island, in the 
silence, and the sweetness, and the longing — and then 
to die. But I don’t mind dying. It is the only thing 
that makes me feel that I can go through with it. 

“ You may have heard that Donald was drowned 
from the Aristo. When I got home I found that my 
other brother, Robert, was dead too. He had appendi- 
citis. So I was all alone, and there was no one to stop 
me doing what I thought was right. The solicitors 
were very angry, and some cousins I have never seen 
before. But I don’t care. I wanted to give Mother 
Ursula the money. No one has ever been to me what 
she is. The only thing I would do to please myself was 
to leave half the fortune to you. I made my will, and 
they can’t alter it. When I am dead you must claim 
it. But I may live a long time — years. That . is 
the dreadful part. Mother Ursula says it is God’s 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 297 

service, and we must pray to be spared to tend the 
sick. Think of it! Those sick people. I can’t pray 
for that. It chokes me. I hope I shall die soon. 

“ Miles ! Miles ! I want to hear your voice again, 
and to creep into your arms. But there is no room for 
me. Another woman has taken my place. Was it 
my place, ever? You said so often that it was. And 
I believed you — until that last night. I never meant 
to tell you, but I will now, because it is just as if I 
were dead. I came to you in your hut. I stood be- 
side you for quite a long time. But you were asleep. 
You did not want me, after all. I meant to give you 
everything you asked for. I wanted to give, and give, 
and give, until I was beggared. But it was too late 
then. Mother Ursula says that I was spared a great 
sin. I ought to thank God that by His direct care I 
was saved. But I can’t! I can’t! I am not grateful 
to God in my heart, though my lips thank Him. I 
know I want you still as I wanted you then. 

“ You used to laugh at me for reading poetry — 
except ‘ Sweet and Low.’ Do you remember? But 
I found something in Swinburne that haunts me. It 
came back to me that last night, and ever since 

‘“Couldst thou not watch with me one hour? Behold, 
Dawn skims the sea with flying feet of gold, 

With sudden feet that graze the gradual sea; 

Couldst thou not watch with me? 

“ * What, not one hour ? for star by star the night 
Falls, and her thousands world by world take flight; 

They die, the day survives, and what of thee? 

Couldst thou not watch with me? 

“ ‘ O dust and ashes, once thought sweet to smell ! 

With me it is not, is it with thee well T 
O sea-drift blown from windward back to seal 
^ Couldst thou not watch with me? 


29B THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

“ * As a new moon above spent stars thou wast ; 

But stars endure after the moon is past. 

Couldst thou not watch one hour, tho* I watch three ? 

Couldst thou not watch with me? 

“ ‘ Since thou art not as these are, go thy ways ; 

Thou hast no part in all my nights and days. 

Lie still, sleep on, be glad — as such things be; 

Thou couldst not watch with me/ ” 

I read it till I knew it by heart. But I have not got 
the books now. Mother Ursula knew who Gideon 
Ivermay was, and that I could send them to him at 
Balliol College. He is Lord Thanet, and he was not 
lost at sea as we thought. We saw his name in the 
papers just lately. So I sent back the books. It was 
one more renunciation. I had come to love them so 
much that I dared not keep them. The Mother asked 
me to question myself as to what good they were do- 
ing me. Then I knew they must go. But I felt as if 
it were the last link with you, somehow. And I al- 
ways seem to care for the wrong things, and then it 
hurts me so to give them up. The true life is sacrifice, 
I know. But I am so far from the saints. 

“If you came now, this minute, and held out your 
arms to me, I should let you take me away and do 
anything you pleased with me. I know this quite well. 
So I am still wicked. But once I have left England 
I know quite as well that I shall never come back. 
Though you implored me, I should not come to you. 
I feel as if a door would shut between us once I have 
gone. And I shall be dead and deaf to you, even 
though I have not yet joined the Order or taken the 
disease I go to nurse. Don’t call to me then — it will 
be no use. It will be my turn to sleep, and yours tq 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 299 

waste vigil. Only in this last hour, I am still alive, and 
longing for you. And it is torment — the death 
agony — 

“ I am writing this at midnight, alone in my room. 
Nobody knows that I am awake, or that I am writing 
to you. If they did they might persuade me not. 
And I must write. Oh, my dear — my darling — 
whatever happens to me I will pray God always to 
bless you and make you happy. And perhaps if I 
give my life up to Him, and His service, He will be 
merciful and listen to me. I can never do anything 
for you again, except this. And you wouldn’t care for 
it if I could. But I shall love you still. I must love 
you all my dreadful life, and when I die, and in Pur- 
gatory. But beyond that they say there is peace. 
Perhaps heaven simply means that we shall never love 
anybody any more. For love is pain. 

“ Leslie Mackelt.” 

Trelawny read carefully. Once or twice he moist- 
ened his lips, and at the end of the pages he coughed 
a queer little short cough before he turned back to the 
head of the letter to look for the address. But there 
was no address, only the postmark Kendal on the 
envelope. The date was three weeks old. 

He put the letter into his pocket, and looked at the 
clock. There was just time to catch the afternoon 
train and reach Trelawny before midnight. They 
did not expect him, for he had been staying at his 
Club, but he wired that he was coming. He did not 
consult either the police or his lawyers, though they 
might have advised him as to the best method of find- 
ing out whether the Nuns of the Seven Sorrows had 


300 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

actually left England on their pilgrimage to southern 
seas. He did better. He went home to talk it over 
with his father. 

Sir Charles and Miles sat up into the small hours 
that night, in the smoking-room (where only a few 
days since Edna had warned him that he had waited 
long enough), with Leslie’s letter between them. The 
older man had listened in silence to the brief state- 
ment of the whole affair that his son had given him ; 
but for all its brevity it was the plain truth that he 
had been unable to tell Edna. 

“ We are both men,” said Sir Charles at the close ; 
“ I might have done as you did under the same cir- 
cumstances. God forbid that I should judge you, my 
boy! But I think a decent fellow would feel rather 
a scoundrel for the way he had treated that girl — eh, 
Miles?” 

Trelawny was silent for a moment, as if seeking 
rather helplessly for words to express elementary 
emotions. The smoking-room, with its solid, mascu- 
line furniture, became a tangible weight upon his ut- 
terance. The very window-curtains seemed to stifle 
his free breath, and to shut out Nature. 

“ I — loved her, sir! ” he said baldly. “ I’m afraid 
I can’t explain. There was nothing but ourselves in 
the Universe. We were man and woman. There 
simply weren’t any churches or laws or social barriers. 
Even if we were rescued, these things seemed trivial — 
just something that might be dealt with later, after the 
essential thing was an established fact.” 

“ It comes to this, after all, that you tried to seduce 
her!” 

“ I tried to make her my wife!” said Trelawny 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 301 

simply, and it was as if the son of Adam spoke at last 
from an older world. 

Sir Charles opened his lips to reply — and closed 
them again. He had met the younger man’s eyes, 
and he was puzzled. He returned to the letter. 

“ It seems to me that one thing at least is clear — 
you’ve got to reclaim your woman, if you care for her 
in this primeval fashion! She is yours in spite of a 
hundred Nuns with missions stronger than the Mother 
Superior’s. The only flaw in your position is that 
you have not claimed her before. Miles, you have 
let things drift!” 

“ Ah, there you put your finger on the weak spot at 
once,” acknowledged Trelawny rather drearily. “ It 
was just the civilization that came between us. Obli- 
gations, duties of time and place, considerations of all 
sorts that beset a man in his prescribed world. I 
ought to have clung to the real thing, and the others 
would have fallen in behind it — taken their proper 
place all right. Now — is it too late? ” 

“ She gives no clue as to when they sail. She sim- 
ply says she is going with them. Stay — I do remem- 
ber. It’s only a small paragraph — in some Church 
paper, I think, that Anna was reading while she was 
here. It never struck me. They must have kept it 
out of the general Press.” 

Sir Charles turned hurriedly to a pile of illustrated 
weeklies and other papers left on a side table, for 
they were not very tidy at Trelawny, old periodicals 
often lying about for a month. He found what he 
was seeking, a semi-religious paper, not an actual 
organ of the Anglican Church, but one that interested 
Anna, whose husband was a clergyman. Sir Charles 


302 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

turned the rustling pages while Miles sat waiting, he 
hardly knew for what, his eyes following half reluc- 
tantly a sheet of Leslie's letter that lay open before 
him. 

“ I may live a long time — years. That is the 
dreadful part. Mother Ursula says it is God’s service, 
and we must pray to be spared to tend the sick. 
Think of it! Those sick people! I can’t pray for 
that. It chokes me. . . .” 

“ There ! ” said Sir Charles, handing him the paper. 

It was only a short account of the heroism of a 
certain Order of Nuns, the Sisters of the Seven Sor- 
rows, some of whom, with their Mother Superior, were 
going to devote their lives to tending and nursing 
sufferers from the horrible scourge of leprosy. The 
Government had granted them the lease of an unin- 
habited island in Polynesia, to be called the Island of 
Notre Dame de Sept Douleurs — colloquially, Notre 
Dame — and the community would sail at once by the 
Thesita of the Lang and Croft line for Montreal, cross 
Canada, and sail again from Vancouver for Tanga- 
roon, a quarantine station already given up to leprosy 
near the Ladrone group. Here the Sisters would be- 
gin their mission by volunteering for work in the hospi- 
tal as practical training among the diseased, and from 
this already scourge-infected island they would take 
stores and building materials and such workmen as 
the leprous could furnish to Notre Dame, to start 
building and provisioning. It was a noble work, and 
a latter-day martyrdom unaccompanied by applause or 
recompense. The funds necessary for the carrying 
out of the work were being furnished by the inheritor 
of the Mackelt millions. 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 303 

The paragraph said nothing about the girl herself 
going with the Sisters. The name of the ship by 
which they sailed and the shipping firm was the only 
clue. But that at least was something. Trelawny 
telegraphed to Messrs. Lang & Croft next day, and 
had his fears confirmed that the The sit a had sailed 
three weeks since. Then he went to Liverpool, and 
bombarded the Steamship Office for further informa- 
tion. The clerk in the passenger department hap- 
pened to remember a good deal about the matter, for 
he had been the means of supplying the Mother Su- 
perior with certain details of the connection at Van- 
couver. Her personality had impressed him inevita- 
bly, as it did every one with whom she came in contact. 
He referred to passenger lists and bygone entries, 
and found the names of the whole party — twelve in 
all — and the name of the last was Leslie Mackelt. 
Trelawny’s heart went down with a sudden throb at 
that intimation. He had not realized until then how 
much he had built upon the fact that she was not men- 
tioned in accompanying the Nuns in the Church paper 
— how much he had clung to the hope that she was 
still in England. He asked, in a voice whose hope- 
lessness struck himself, when the boat would reach 
Montreal, and, allowing a week on the Canadian Pa- 
cific Railway, the name of the other that would take 
them on to Tangaroon. The clerk knew that also — 
he had made the inquiries. It was the Sarawak , a 
sailing ship; but the date of her departure from Van- 
couver he could not say. He had warned the Mother 
Superior that she might very likely have to wait at 
the latter port. 

There was only one thing to do now, to cable to 


304 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 


Leslie and implore her not to go on, but to wait at 
Vancouver until he could write to her. He sent the 
message with the reply paid, and another to the agent 
to inform him if the ship had sailed, regardless of any 
costs, and then there was nothing for him to do but 
wait, with his hands tied, in England, for that forlorn 
hope on the other side of the world ; and all the while 
the ominous words of Leslie’s letter beat time to an 
equal premonition in his own soul : “ Once I have 

felt England I know quite as well that I shall never 
come back. Though you implored me, I should not 
come to you. I feel as if a door would shut between 
us, once I am gone. . . . Don’t call on me then — 

it will be no use. It will be my turn to sleep , and 
yours to waste vigil . . ” 

He could not bear the look of the docks and the 
shipping, or the busy people, all so intent on their own 
affairs, their own lives, while his private tragedy was 
nothing to them. He hated the sea — the cold, bright 
splendour of its June aspect hurt him, as he stared 
with lined eyes out to the horizon, seeing in fancy the 
spread canvas of the fatal ship that was taking her 
away from him, out to the horror of disease and death. 
He did not hesitate now to call the Mother Superior 
unscrupulous, or to curse her in his man’s unavailing 
craving for the thing denied. The beauty of her serene 
face rising on his memory seemed a menace to him. 
Rome is always called unscrupulous by those who 
have been thwarted by the enormous force of its fana- 
tics. The Mother Superior was no more unscrupu- 
lous than he would have been in persuading Leslie to 
another course, if he had had his turn; but he had let 
it slip, and the white-winged ship was perhaps carry- 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 305 

ing her away even now in the shadow of that black- 
robed figure with the devotion to a vocation that he 
had not given to love itself. Then in a change of 
mood he saw that Mother Ursula was not to be 
blamed, for that the blame was all his own. She had 
thought with Leslie that he had accepted his freedom 
from obligation and gone back to the older bonds, al- 
lowing the girl to drop out of his life with consent if 
not complacency. Heartbroken, very loveless, and 
passionately capable of devotion, he knew exactly how 
Leslie would fling herself and her starved nature at the 
feet of such a woman as the Mother Superior; and, 
without haste or coercion whatever, Mother Ursula 
had simply taken this strayed lamb into the fold, and 
given her such peace and comfort as she might. The 
outcry of that last letter had been for him alone. It 
was probable that the Mother had never heard from 
Leslie, however much her intuition told her, of the 
girl’s physical repulsion for the task she insisted on at- 
tempting, or her repressed passion for a man who 
had abandoned her. 

But of what might happen after he dared not think 
too much — the wonderful, beautiful Island marred 
with wooden structures like barracks, the bush partly 
cleared, the workers — his sickened mind would hardly 
picture them — men and women with formless faces, 
flesh eaten away, every stage of the disease in all its 
horror. This nightmare darkening the face of the 
flowering wilderness where love had dwelt ! And 
among them all — Leslie ! He flinched to think of it, 
as she had done, and his limbs shuddered. Not Leslie 
— not the sound, sweet woman whom he had held in 
his arms, and felt her wholesome blood throbbing 
20 


306 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

against his* Leslie — infected — unclean — hef re- 
luctant youth brought to the sacrifice with shivering 
disgust 1 The cruelty of it I Surely no mind but a 
fiend’s could have conceived anything so ghastly. He 
turned back from his own imagining, and hurried away 
from the sight of the sea, back to his hotel, to inquire 
for the tenth time for the cable. He was helpless — 
tied. He had to rejoin his regiment next week, and 
return to the duties and routine of his life, and while 
on sick leave he could not, of course, leave England. 
The weight of civilization was upon him again, and 
he might not follow her to the ends of the earth and 
save her from herself, as lawless love counselled. 
There are so many considerations to weigh with a 
man, as Edna had said — there is only one issue to 
a woman. Yet he could not believe that the worst 
could happen — even now his message might have 
stopped her. It must have done; if God had any 
mercy. . . . 

The cable had come at last. He tore it open, and 
read with strained eyes. 

“ Sarazvak sailed y ester-day.” 

Trelawny stood for a minute with the flimsy piece 
of paper in his hands, wondering that so small a 
thing could bear so heavy an import — then, with an 
impulse of rage against fate, he crushed it in his hand 
as if it could feel his anger, and flung it from him. 
The mood had passed the next moment, and left him 
ashamed of his childishness, and with a crushing sense 
of defeat. In all his rather matter-of-fact and easy- 
going life he had never been as hard hit by fortune 
as this — not even on the Island, for there he had al- 
ways found compensation. He was of his class a 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 307 

very average Englishman, shunning emotion not so 
much for its unpleasantness as that he hated to have 
his self-control threatened. He had had his passions, 
but they had not laid waste his life, which had been 
full of a thousand interests rather than one or two. 
Now he had to face what was to him a really great 
thing, and it found him blind and dumb. . . . 

He went out again from the hotel and walked about 
the streets of the city, seeing no face clearly, and not 
knowing whither he was going until he found himself 
in a quieter neighbourhood — a neighbourhood of side 
streets and respectably poor residents. He did not 
notice much. His brain was concerned with the cable 
message and his tardy remorse. “ The Sarawak 
sailed yesterday. It is all my own fault. I have got 
to face the consequences,” said the monotonous moni- 
tor, spurring him to take it “ standing up ” at least, 
as his creed had taught him. No use complaining or 
appealing — it was his own fault. There was some- 
thing a little pathetic in his blank acceptance of his 
desserts, while his own feeling buffeted him beyond 
his understanding. He could hardly tell how this 
thing had happened. He knew that he had lost Leslie 
Mackelt, and that something too horrible to contem- 
plate was going to happen to her through his fault. 
He was surprised to find himself clenching his hands, 
as though to prevent himself crying out. 

Life had passed in leisurely fashion for Trelawny as 
regards mental experience, until this hour. Now it 
was all crammed into small space, and he was endur- 
ing minute by minute what might have been filtered 
through years. It frightened him to find that he 
could feel so vividly and beyond his own control. 


308 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

He walked down the colourless, sordid streets, past 
the tiny houses, whose front strip of grass was railed 
off from the pavement, and he saw nothing until his 
eyes leapt to consciousness of a figure in the severe 
grey and white of a lay Sister of some Order who was 
coming out of one of the narrow gates, and as they 
reached the pavement together he came face to face 
with Leslie Mackelt. . . . 

She might, indeed, have been a ghost from the way 
in which she looked at him. Out of a face blanched 
by illness the bones seemed sharpened to harder angles, 
her lips were almost colourless and drawn in the set 
line of a middle-aged woman, and her hair was brushed 
back under the grey veil so that the hollows showed 
in her temples. Nothing seemed alive in her save the 
feverish brown eyes that stared out and beyond Tre- 
lawny as if she did not see him at all. 

He had not cried out — he was sure he had not, 
for at first he had thought that her face and figure 
were really a trick of the imagination. But he fol- 
lowed her along the street, hanging so closely to her 
skirt that he nearly brushed against her. And yet she 
never looked round or seemed to realize his presence, 
but walked steadily on through street after street un- 
til she came to a larger house than the cottages she 
had been visiting, which was obviously some sort of 
hostelry, perhaps of her Order. She did not knock, 
but opened the door, which was on the latch, and 
passed in with Trelawny still following her. They 
were in a square hall, sparsely furnished, with doors 
upon all sides of them, and Leslie opened one of these 
and walked into an empty room — evidently a wait- 
ing-room for visitors or those on business. Still he 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 309 

followed, as if it were some unhappy dream, and 
then for the first time she turned and faced him, her 
back to the door she had closed, her grip still upon 
the handle. 

“ Why have you come to trouble my peace ? ” she 
said in a low voice, and the sound was hollow as a 
dead person’s might be. 

“ I got your letter, and followed you to Liverpool,” 
he answered in the same hushed fashion. “ They 
told me — you had gone abroad. I cabled — but the 

ship had left Vancouver. I was afraid ” His 

voice died, and the nausea of physical fear that had 
overcome him at the thought of her destiny made him 
shudder again. 

“ Not yet ! ” she said, and her voice was like a wail. 
“ Not yet ! I had to wait a little longer, and then 
— we must go!” He heard the hissing breath of 
fear through her lips and made an involuntary move- 
ment as if to shield her. 

“ How was it that you did not go ? ” he said dully. 
He had not realized the mercy yet. He only knew 
that she stood there repelling him without a word, 
and it was as if he talked to her through some im- 
passable barrier. 

“ I fell ill,” she said. “ It was just at the last mo- 
ment. Some little silly trifling complaint that our 
children had had in the school — German measles, I 
think, or chicken-pox. It was very slight, but being 
infectious, I could not take it on board, or let others 
run risks. If it had been a broken arm it need not 
have kept me ! ” she cried bitterly. “ But this stupid 
ailment delays it all, and now it has to be done later 
on.” He felt in some queer, intuitive way that what 


310 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

she missed was the personality of the Mother Superior, 
the moral support that had carried her on to her 
sacrifice, and without which she grew more and more 
appalled at her approaching fate. 

“ One of the Sisters stayed behind with me,” said 
Leslie after a moment’s pause. “ We are going on 
next week. We shall miss some of the training — that 
is all.” 

Her voice dropped as if the subject were finished, 
but his own rose in passionate protest, almost to his 
own surprise, to find that he was suddenly possessed 
of words after his stunned lethargy. 

“ You shall not go ! It is iniquitous to think of it — 
indeed you shall not, while I have any strength left 
to prevent you ! Leslie, listen to me ! ” He tried to 
get nearer to her, but the curious, cynical smile on her 
stiff lip held him back against his will. “ I am free — 
I would not come till I made things right with Edna. 
You can’t deny me ! — after what you have told me — 
that last night ” He stopped confusedly, meet- 

ing her bright, hungry eyes. 

“ You were asleep ! ” she said. 

“ I was a senseless clod — a swine ! ” he cried. 
“ But I am awake at last. I know how I want you. 
You must come to me, and be my wife. You can’t 
go through with this mad scheme — it isn’t in you. 
Only fanatics could do it, and you were never a fana- 
tic, really. You want love — you will always need it. 
Don’t you remember all those weeks on the Island 
when we knew that we were natural mates ” 

“You were asleep! ” she said softly, as if listening 
to some memory that was clearer than his voice. 

“ Leslie ! ” he said, and there was sharp fear in his 


THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 31 1 

voice at last. “ I am only a man — not a conqueror. 
I can’t force you as I thought to do. Won’t you give 
it up, and come back to me ? Won’t you ? ” The 
sudden sense of his impotence struck him like a blow, 
so that he really reeled a little away from her, and 
stood staring at her tense white face. 

“ Listen ! ” she said very quickly and rapidly. “ I 
think my heart is dead — I think I have quite killed 
every feeling in me but fear. I can still be afraid ! ” 
He knew the horror of which she thought, and flinched 
also. “ But it is as if you spoke to a dead woman, 
who cannot hear you. And, besides, I have prom- 
ised ! ” 

“ It is a wicked promise! ” he cried out in despair. 
“ It could not bind you ! ” 

For a minute a puzzled look passed across her face, 
as if some doubt troubled her. Then the feverish eyes 
regained their rapt expression. 

“ I am quite dead,” she repeated. “ You cannot 
touch me now. You have left me too long alone — I 
died very slowly, but I think the very last spark of 
feeling has gone now.” 

Dead! with such eyes? He met their miserable 
brilliance with his own for an instant, and then, as if 
convinced, he dropped suddenly upon a little hard 
sofa by the bare wall and hid his face in his hands. It 
was not tears — it was only the demand for a mo- 
ment’s breathing space in which to face failure. She 
had forced his humiliation upon him, and, as he ad- 
mitted, he was no conqueror. He sat still and let the 
World pass by for a minute, as we all do at the worst 
moments of our lives. 

Leslie Mackelt stood and looked at him, and as she 


312 THE UNOFFICIAL HONEYMOON 

looked her face broke up from its deathlike mask 
in a hideous fashion. It was as if her features worked 
out of their repose in a throe of agony, and it was not 
good to see — but Trelawny’s face was hidden. Then 
with one fierce movement she tore the veil and coif 
from her head, loosening the thick, dark hair by her 
roughness, and the next instant she had flung herself 
across the space between them. She was down on the 
floor, her face buried on his knees, her arms wide- 
stretched for him, a passion-broken thing that asked 
no mercy and felt nothing but the imperative necessity 
of the one woman to the one man. . . . 

And so he took her. 


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